The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón

Ada Limón is probably my favorite contemporary poet. I’ve read all her books, and was excited to read The Hurting Kind. All the traits I love about Limón’s writing are found here in these poems—they are open and intimate so that it feels like catching up with a friend over a cold glass of tea—but the tone is more subdued and mournful than many of her past writings. Your friend is working though some stuff and you can’t help her except by listening. Is she mourning losses in her life? Is it ennui? Is it a personal crisis of her place in the world? And then we get to the acknowledgments and find the poet confess, “These last years have been hard, grief-filled, and isolated, and yet I’ve never been isolated because I’ve had these fine people in my corner.” And this confirms what an amazing writer Limón is—how emotionally honest she is with her readers. These poems are filled with unread omens and dreams with unclear meanings, with nature and with solitude—too much wonderful solitude. They are beautiful and natural and true. They are like an old friend. Buy here.

From “Drowning Creek”

. . . People were nothing to that bird, hovering over

the creek. I was nothing to that bird, which wasn’t

concerned with history’s bloody battles or why

this creek was called Drowning Creek, a name

I love though it gives me shivers, because

it sounds like an order, a place where one

goes to drown. The bird doesn’t call the creek

that name. The bird doesn’t call it anything.

I’m almost certain, though I am certain

of nothing. There is a solitude in this world

I cannot pierce. I would die for it.

From “The First Fish”

When I pulled that great fish up out of Lake Skinner’s

double-mirrored surface, I wanted to release

the tugging beast immediately. Disaster on the rod,

it seemed he might yank the whole aluminum skiff

down toward the bottom of his breathless world.

The old tree of a man yelled to hang on and would

not help me as I reeled and reeled, finally seeing

the black carp come up to meet me, black eye

to black eye. In the white cooler it looked so impossible.

Is this where I am supposed to apologize? . . .

From “Calling Things What They Are”

I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that I’ve even dug out the binoculars an old poet gave me back when I was young and heading to the Cape with so much future ahead of me it was like my own ocean. Tufted titmouse! I yell . . .