'Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. The Carrying is a gift' Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate 'Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet's perspective into themes of loss, chronic pain, fear of the 21st century's ongoing devastations, concern for the natural world. It's a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart' Tracy K. Smith, Guardian 'In her dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying , Ada Limon offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How should we treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer, like humans' Jami Attenberg.
The Carrying : Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry