Ada Limón Named the 24th U. S. Poet Laureate
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Today the Library of Congress announced that Ada Limón will become the United States’s 24th poet laureate in the autumn. She joins the ranks of such luminaries as Rita Dove, Louise Glück, Tracy K. Smith, Robert Penn Warren, and the outgoing laureate, Joy Harjo.
The poet laureate nod is just the latest of Limón’s literary laurels; she’s also won a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, and was a finalist for a National Book Award.
In April, Limón kicked off Oprah Daily’s celebration of National Poetry Month with a videotaped reading of “A Good Story” from The Hurting Kind, her most recent collection: Some days—dishes piled in the sink, books littering the coffee table—/are harder than others. Today, my head is packed with cockroaches. Here the poet acknowledges how even the most familiar, quotidian details are charged with meaning, if we allow ourselves to perceive. The Hurting Kind is an exquisitely calibrated, confident collection that views the self and the world less in opposition and more bound in an uneasy détente, locked in a dance that yields beauty as well as burden. Elsewhere Limón writes: There was no message/given, no message I was asked to give, a call to wonder and a cry from the heart. The gentle flow of her lines, the masterly use of rhythm and enjambment and lush imagery, pulls us along like a river.
Limón’s publishing partners exulted in the news. Milkweed Edition’s Daniel Slager commented to Oprah Daily, “At this moment in our nation's cultural life—one fraught by division, to be sure, but also rich with possibilities for renewed connection, and for the growing resonance of poetry—I can think of no better choice for the role of U.S. poet laureate than Ada Limón. She can be both tender and fierce, often within the same poem, touchingly vulnerable and gorgeously exultant. She understands our need for connection, and the power of poetry to bring us together.” Limón’s literary agent, Rob McQuilkin, echoed Slager’s sentiment: “Ada’s work has always been singular, I think, for the clarity of focus it brings to a reader’s innermost joys and dreads. And so it feels so deeply right today—with the world, and all of us in it, finding itself on such a knife’s edge—to see her selected for this particular honor. Because it’s not just an accolade but a tool. And, boy, will she use it!”
It’s precisely this sense of urgency and mission that readers and colleagues avidly embrace in her work. Broadside PR’s Michael Taeckens has choreographed two publicity campaigns, for The Hurting Kind and her preceding collection, The Carrying; he notes that “Ada is not only one of our most prominent and celebrated contemporary poets, but an unparalleled literary citizen who has long lifted up the work of others. Her love of poetry is sacred, joyful, infectious±exactly what we need in this dark time. The Library of Congress couldn’t have found a more ideal candidate for poet laureate; it will be a thing of beauty to watch her work her considerable magic.”
Savor Limón’s magic and music, a necessary muse for our troubled times.
You Might Also Like
