Bright Dead Things: Ada Limon

the power of her language and imagination is extraordinary.

The book is incredible was disappointed by the condition when it arrived.

Bright Dead Things is art on paper, it is painting with words. Limón’s sermonic deliverance of snapshots of her life in poetic form tug at the raw emotions we experience when dealing with love, loss, and life. In “The Quiet Machine” Limón says “then there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore.” Hinting to the buried angst and complacency we may all experience at one point or another that will eventually unearth itself.Limón devotes a large section of Bright Dead Things to the loss of her step-mom in an anguished and heart wrenching assembly of poems. In “The Riveter” she says,See, our job was simple:keep on living. Her job was harder,the hardest. Her job,her work, was to let the machineof survival breakdown,Lending a stark reminder of the realities of sickness and death that swiftly invokes feelings of empathy and compassion for her and her family during that time. Death makes an appearance in many forms throughout this book, like in “The Long Ride” when she says “I bet that horse might have wanted to / die before he died.” Unsurprising though, with a name like Bright Dead Things.The theme of landscape, wilderness, and wildlife dominate the pages of this National Book Critics Circle and National Book Award finalist. Limón gives a humanness to nature while simultaneously giving an organic wildness to herself. In “The Rewilding” Limón says, “I don’t want to be only the landscape: the bones buried” and in “Mowing” she says “I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine,” tying her self-depiction directly to things of the land.Limón takes special care to masterfully pay homage to history and the origins of places she has been and things she has seen. In “During The Impossible Age of Everyone’’ she says “There are so many people who’ve come before us, / arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.” Or in “Trick of the Light” when she says “Now, there are no oranges at all in the whole / of San Fernando Valley, no oranges, just names // of streets: Orange Boulevard, Orange County. / The way we do. Naming what’s no longer there.” Gently forcing the reader to examine the impact we have made on our surroundings, human or otherwise, over the years,Ambivalence rings loud throughout Limón’s poems as she moves from state to state expressing feelings of loneliness and enthusiasm concurrently. In “Nashville After Hours” Limón says “the bully girl who / kicked you out of the city is no one, no rotten / crumb left, just a dizzy river of nonsense.” Then in “The Problem with Travel” she says “but I want to be / who I am, going where / I’m going, all over again.” Limón acquaints the reader with the ebbs and flows that come with moving to a foreign city that looks drastically different than the one you came from before and the eager nervousness that may follow along for the ride.Jumping from calamity to calm, from mayhem to tranquility, Limón keeps us in a vulnerable yet curious state as we journey with her through the happenings of her life and the profound emotions that accompany being human. Limón seamlessly intertwines whimsical, abstract ideas with very real, tangible cognitions like in “The Other Wish” as she compares life to a lightbulb saying “what’s your brilliant glaring wattage? // What do you dare to gleam out and reflect?” Limón’s brilliant writing makes way for unforgettable imagery making Bright Dead Things not only an easy read but a must read.

Ho acquistato questo libro per fare un regalo di compleanno e la persona che l'ha ricevuto ne è rimasta molto contenta!

Bright Dead Things is a collection of poems by Ada Lemon, and they depict various parts of her life split into four chapters. In this book we get the beautiful ambiguity that poetry is known for, but what ties each poem together is the prominent themes throughout the book. The most powerful and observant themes are that of change whether that be of location, emotions, or physical. This get’s illustrated by Limon being placed in a new environment, and she notes how different the setting is compared to her previous one. She uses animals and landscapes to highlight what these changes are, and how she compares to them. This is really prominent in the first two chapters where she focuses on her move to another state. We get poems of orchards, horse races, and going out on dates. A theme that corresponds with the theme of change but stands on its own is the theme of heartbreak. Chapter two gives us insights on her breakup while the third tells us about the loss of her mother. What I really enjoyed was Limon’s constant depiction that change was this brute, relentless force that’s inevitable. But this wasn’t due to these monolithic catastrophes that only specific people can relate, rather it was breakups, the loss of a family member and moving that was the focus which gave everything a relatable touch. A small detail that I noticed and adored was seeing the confidence in Limon’s self-image grow over the book. In the beginning she writes lines that make her seem timid or weak, but with a desire to be stronger. Towards the middle has lines that allude to us that she’s ready to empower herself despite her circumstances. Then in the last chapter we get these declarations of self-positivity. A favorite of mine was this line in her poem Service which was “Girl, no one’s going to tell me/ when to take a leak, when to bow down,/ when not to bite. So, right then, in the dim lights of the strange garage, I lifted my skirt and pissed/ like the hard bitch I was.”/. Lines like these that sprinkled throughout the last chapter really solidify the transformation that Limon went through and gives the book a narrative that comes to its completion.Let’s take a look at one of Limon’s poems titled The Whale and the Waltz Inside of it. This poem is not only one of my favorites from the book but also one that captures the ideas of change I’ve mentioned. It starts off with three images that the poem focuses on ;moving to places such as Alaska, whales ,and a woman going out on her own. They each intertwine with one another, sometimes cutting each other off. While this may seem like several separate ideas, they actually work together to create the point about how the author feels about the change of location. I think this becomes clear on page 83 where she tells an anecdote of a woman traveling to Alaska and using a goat for a potential offering to hostile bears. She uses this story of animals and traveling to compare it to how lost one can feel and needs the experience of others to know it’s a safe path. Here’s an excerpt from the poem:What I mean is: none of this is chaos./ Immigration, cross the river, the blood of us./ It goes like this: water, land, water. Like a waltz./ I am in no hurry to stop believing we are supposed/ to sway like this, that we too are immense and calling out./With these lines at the end we get the message of the poem. To Limon, the whales represent these strong beasts that have gone through life alterations. They have evolved from land animals, to sea ,then back to water and Limon sees this not as a chaotic feature but one that is natural. She compares it to a waltz because of it’s “clockwork”-like cycle: always moving around and around. This use of hyperbole is meant to explore her acceptance that her drastic changes are supposed to happen, and while she is frightened by the ambiguity it's still something she takes on. Given the fact that the chapter previous to this one focuses on the death of her mother, this seems appropriate. But it can also be seen as a comparison to her breakups. What supports this idea is that she mentions that whales are capable of intimacy and suffering, and the waltz is a dance move meant to be performed by a couple.

Limon's poems flow with an ease and a fit into their own sense so perfectly that it makes every one a pleasure to read. The Kentucky poems are marvelous. I could hardly stop reading them and put my light out at night.