Generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay. Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them, Whoa! Ada in Hinterland – where her once single, city girl self sets up housekeeping with her boyfriend: “What is it to go to a We from an I?” Limón, however, takes that initial metaphorical heart-pumping moment and like Alice dives into a bucolic rabbit hole, landing in Kentucky. Naturally, as post time approaches, we place our bets on the thoroughbred to win. This ode to female empowerment raises the stakes. The collection opens with the poem “How to Triumph like a Girl”: “I like the lady horses best / how they make it all look so easy.” Then “I like that they are ladies /…as if this dangerous animal is also a part of me.” This recognition leads to the declaration: “don’t you want to lift my shirt and see / the huge beating genius machine / that thinks, no, it knows / it’s going to come in first.” Limon provides a well-worn, tear-stained, cigarette-burned road map of discovery and dead ends. It is a cross-country trip into the interior and exterior life – of a life examined. It is that eternal quest to find our place in the world. In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Gregg Barrios on poetry finalist Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions).Īda Limón’s fourth and most accomplished book of poetry is a tour de force of poetic invention.īright Dead Things is a search for home and self-realization.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |