Bright Dead Things: Poems

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Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.
A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contacttracing in intimate detail the various ways the speakers sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Limn has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a huge beating genius machine striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying, the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank OHara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limns work is consistently generous and accessiblethough every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.

Reviews

Long list selection for the National Book Award for poetry Best Poetry Book of 2015: New York Times and Buzzfeed Praise for Bright Dead Things "Effortlessly lyrical."--New York Times "These poems are, as my students might say, hella intimate. They are meticulously honed and gorgeously crafted. They marry the lyric poem's interior emotional intensity with its exterior mode of social conveyance and aesthetic beauty... The best compliment one can give a book of poems is that the book loves the reader. Bright Dead Things doesn't just love poetry; it loves the reader. My hunch is, Reader, you'll love it too."--The Huffington Post "Bright Dead Things, the fourth book of poems by Ada Limon, breeds a particular mixture of wildness. The mixture is by turns melodious and tight. Limon's poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book."--The Millions "Limon's work is destined to find a place with readers on the strength of her voice alone. Her intensity here is paradoxically set against the often slow burn of life in Kentucky, and the results will please readers."--Flavorwire "Poet and Critic Stephen Burt says, 'Prose sense is to poetry as tonality is to music.' And I see that sense of prose cushioned in each poem included in this leguminous compilation. The works wear complexity on their sleeves with reassuring accessibility on their faces; to say it more succinctly, there's a tough grilling of the soul and champagnes served to the measure of each ones taste."--The Rumpus "In Ada Limon's Bright Dead Things, there's a fierce jazz and sass ("this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrow's tug.") and there's sadness--a grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns "stay safe and seek shelter" and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangeness--and finds it everywhere."--Gregory Orr "Ada Limon doesn't write as if she needs us. She writes as if she wants us. Her words reveal, coax, pull, see us. In Bright Dead Things we read desire, ache, what human beings rarely have the heart or audacity to speak of alone--without the help of a poet with the most generous of eyes."--Nikky Finney "Limon does far more than merely reflect the world: she continually transforms it, thereby revealing herself as an everyday symbolist and high level duende enabler. At the end of one poem she writes, "What the heart wants The heart wants/ her horses back," and suddenly even this most urban reader feels wild and free."--Matthew Zapruder "Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix."--Richard Blanco Starred Review "In her newest volume of poems, Limon (Sharks in the Rivers) delves into the divided self--self separated by geography, by loss, by change, by circumstance. VERDICT Generous of heart, intricate and accessible, the poems in this book are wondrous and deeply moving."--Library Journal "A poet whose verse exudes warmth and compassion, Limon is at the height of her creative powers, and Bright Dead Things is her most gorgeous book of poems."--Los Angeles Review of Books "Richly written and felt."--Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Ada Limon is the author of four poetry collections. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, and Guernica. She lives in Kentucky and California.