The Carrying

¿Ada Limón¿s new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty.¿ (NPR)

From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying - her most powerful collection yet. Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious and brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility - ¿What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?¿ - and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: ¿Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.¿ And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. ¿Fine then, / I¿ll take it,¿ she writes. ¿I¿ll take it all.¿