Praise for You Are Here "Lush with lyricism and striking imagery, these poems by Jericho Brown, Diane Seuss, and others contemplate seascapes, backyards, national borders, and built environments where life sings beneath the surface." --Poets & Writers "The expansive You Are Here surveys both the landscape of the natural world and the landscape of contemporary poetry. Pastoral witness neighbors environmental concern; established talents neighbor emerging voices; lakes and forests neighbor pools and cemeteries. Dear gardeners, bookworms, lumberjacks, cartographers, bird-watchers, scholars, students, poets, and general readers: You Are Here will leave you more attuned to the textures of countryside and country. Language and land become a capacious singularity in Ada Limón''s superb compilation." --Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin "The poets in this collection share the richness of their breathing. Rich with noticing, rich with longing, rich with grace, their breath--preserved in poems--become our breathing. The gift here is the true scale of our breath, an interspecies, planetary scale.
The scale of gratitude. I am so glad you are here." --Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals "A gorgeous collection that captures the bittersweetness of being alive on this planet today. Each poem is a prayer, an elegy, a celebration of the world and our place in it." -- Laurel McCaull, Green Apple Books & Music, San Francisco, California "A beautiful cross between a Mary Oliver chapbook, and the kindness poetry anthologies edited by James Crews. There are famous names here but also new ones I was happy to discover, all beautifully evoking specific and unique spots in nature for reflection. The introduction by Limón is poetry itself. A perfect poetry collection to have at hand as we move into the growing season.
" -- Deb Wayman, Fair Isle Books & Gifts, Washington Island, WI "Ada Limón has an accomplished ear, and in this collection of nature poetry, she gathers poets who know all the ways poetry is for everyone-a collection that is at once a conversation and a chorus and a call to stay in love with and care about the planet. The title comes from the phrase on maps that orient us to our surroundings, so we know where we are and where we can go, and which perfectly encapsulates Limón''s vision for this work. If you like poetry and just being outside, pick up this volume." -- Jennifer Martin, Tattered Cover, Denver, CO "I loved this sparkling, invigorating curated collection edited by Ada Limón, our 24th Poet Laureate of the U.S. It is an homage to the natural world and all it can mean to we humans who have been graced to live within it. The poems selected for inclusion are appropriate for reading by experienced poetry lovers as well as by those who are just beginning to learn to appreciate the art of poetics. Surely you are one of these readers.
" --Linda Bond, Auntie''s Bookstore, Spokane WA "What a beautiful collection that gets at the need to care for our natural world both in the everyday mundane and the small ways. I felt like I was there on the porches, by the bogs, as well as in the more difficult (and real) imagining of what future generations will never get a chance to see or experience if we don''t act." --Morgan DePerno, Bookmarks Winston-Salem, North Carolina Praise for The Hurting Kind "So grateful am I for Limón''s powerfully observant eye. There are many wonderful poems here and a handful of genuine masterpieces. The Hurting Kind is packed with quiet celebrations of the quotidian. Limón forces herself to confront, again and again in these poems, nature''s unwillingness to yield its secrets--it''s one of her primary subjects. The seemingly abundant wisdom of the natural world is really a vision of her own searching reflection. Limón is great company in the presence of the inchoate, able and willing to stand with her readers before the frightening mysteries and hopeful uncertainties of the everyday.
"-- New York Times Book Review "I can always rely on an Ada Limón poem to give me hope, but Limón''s poems don''t give us the kind of facile Hallmark hope; rather, her hope is hard-earned, even laced with grief or happiness . Limón is a master at making a simple idea (that of hindsight, seeing the bright side of things) askew. ''And so I have/two brains now,'' she writes. ''Two entirely different brains.'' Limón gives us two brains in her poems too, revealing new ways to view the world."-- Victoria Chang, New York Times Magazine "In her sixth collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind , Ada Limón seeks to find the intimate connections between the seemingly disparate in the everyday: humans and the natural world, the living and the dead, the intellectual and the spiritual. The collection''s title is apt--it is a testament to the innate power of feeling, whether grief, rage, or tenderness. For Limón, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, who declares herself ''too sensitive, a weeper.
the hurting kind,'' even the seemingly banal facets of our existence deserve not only observation, but also empathy and amazement."-- TIME Magazine, 100 Must Read Books of 2022 "Limón''s poems are unique for the deep attention they pay to both the world''s wounds and its redemptive beauty. In otherwise dark times, they have the power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires." --The Ezra Klein Show "[Ada Limón] is one of my all-time favorite writers, someone whose work I return to again and again for solace, inspiration, and truth." --Nicole Chung, The Atlantic "For poet Ada Limón, evidence of poetry is everywhere. It connects big ideas--like fear, isolation, even death--with little details--like field sparrows, a box of matches, or ''the body moving / freely.'' The award-winning poet''s sixth and latest collection, The Hurting Kind , is a testament to the power of such sensitivity . The power of attention, Limón conveys, is in finding out just how an individual''s experience might fit into the collective experience.
But in The Hurting Kind Limón takes her method even further to ask: Isn''t wonder enough? . Above all, The Hurting Kind asks for our attention to stay tender. To know that the world is here to both guide us and lead us astray. Toward the end of the long poem, Limón writes: ''I will not stop this reporting of attachments. / There is evidence everywhere.'' So don''t stop looking. Just be open to what you may find. And know that the world is watching you, too.
"-- NPR " The Hurting Kind is a book of living language -- and nowhere more than in the way words animate the poems . Throughout [Limón''s] work, the language is direct and unadorned while also playful and full of unexpected turns. Something similar is true of The Hurting Kind , which is a quieter book -- but no less fierce for being so. When Limón exclaims, in the last line of the poem and the collection, ''I am asking you to touch me,'' she is writing out of the darkness of the pandemic, but she is also addressing something more universal and profound. What are words worth if they can''t help to bridge the gaps between us? It''s a question many of us are asking as we try to navigate this fallen world." --David Ulin, Los Angeles Times "Ada Limón is a bright light in a dark time. Her keen attention to the natural world is only matched by her incredible emotional honesty. Considering the arc from youthful vibrancy to protective camouflage, Limón tracks the beauty of wisdom as we age.
Reconciling the all too human matter of our lives within the spectacle of nature, Limón archives a suspended grace. The Hurting Kind . explor[es] the restorative connections between human life and the natural world. The poems reckon with vulnerability and grief in a startling and broken world."-- Vanity Fair "Again and again in this poetry collection, her sixth, Limón confronts nature''s unwillingness to yield its secrets--it''s one of her primary subjects. The seemingly abundant wisdom of the natural world is really a vision of her own searching reflection. ''Limón looks out her window, walks around her yard, and, like Emily Dickinson, trips over infinities,'' our reviewer wrote."-- New York Times, "100 Notable Books of 2022" "Ada Limón''s sixth and latest collection is a testament to the power of sensitivity.
As with her previous award-winning books, The Carrying and Bright Dead Things , these poems are acutely aware of the natural world. And Limón has a knack for acknowledging nature''s little mysteries in order to fully capture its history and abundance. For her, evidence of poetry is everywhere. She connects big ideas--fear, isolation, even death--with little details, like field sparrows, a box of matches or ''the b.