To help us through the day: the great blue heron They begin to lie to one another to fill this need for communion: An example of this is found in Limón’s poem “The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road.” The poem describes a ritual of daughter and stepfather who delight in seeing a blue heron while driving past a local pond to such an extent they’re disappointed on occasions when it’s not there. And sometimes story expands the scope of personhood by adding a dash of mythology.
The advantage of the “I” of authorship is that it allows a personal touch absent in a more clinical brand of poetry. To see more sky than just this little squareīut then we’d miss Brooklyn, and each other, While elsewhere carrots are uprooted, the poem “Someplace like Montana” conveys the emotional toll of human uprooting through a bar conversation set in Brooklyn: There’s a trajectory to life expressed in the collection: from a semi-rural childhood home in Northern California to New York City to the poet’s adopted rural environs of Kentucky. The poem prefers the musculature of horses over manes braided with flowers: Right out of the gate, the collection’s first poem “How to Triumph like a Girl” argues for the unbridled expression of the human spirit. The poem expresses regret but also resistance to a life of passivity. The phrase “bright dead things” comes from the collection’s poem “I Remember the Carrots.” Limón writes: “When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots, / their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.” The child, wanting to possess this beauty, rips out the immature crop and is scolded by her father. If a mere book of poetry can invite the reader into the kitchen for coffee and a story, Limón’s new collection Bright Dead Things does just that.īright Dead Things explores the duality of joy and suffering. While some theories of poetry argue for silencing the “I” of authorship, Ada Limón’s brand of poetry is personal and emotionally honest. Isn’t that such a better way of sussing out whether or not a poetry collection is for you? This poetry collection, for instance, is very much for me.ISBN: 978-1571314710In life’s trajectory from childhood story hour to adult happy hour, good storytellers are in demand. The thing I really like about this collection: instead of an adverb-and-adjective-description-heavy blurb on the inside cover (which, let’s face it, never really tells the reader much about whether or not they’re likely to enjoy the poems inside), this collection has one of Limón’s poems Bright Dead Things was one of the extras. I got a little over-excited when the Governor General’s Literary Awards nominations were announced this fall and requested all of the nominees from the library, plus a couple extras that happened to be nearby on the shelf.
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