Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón

Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things was Finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. The language of the poems in this book is so frank and honest, it startles. The poems take you beyond questions of craft, and into real connection with the human. They feel like a cousin catching up on the deeply personal news of her life. But the pieces are still poetry, at its best, because they distill human experience so clearly and cleanly—they make moonshine. Buy here.

From “The Quiet Machine”

I’m learning so many different ways to be quiet. There’s how I stand in the lawn, that’s one way. There’s also how I stand in the field across from the street, that’s another way because I’m farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There’s how I don’t answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I’m not home when people knock. . .

From “After You Toss Around the Ashes”

When she was dying, it was impossible to see forward to the next minute. What was happening—for whole weeks—was all that was happening and happening and happening. Months before that, I got the dumb soup wrong. How awful. It was all she wanted and I had gotten it wrong . . .

From “Lies About Sea Creatures”

I lied about the whales. Fantastical blue / water-dwellers, big, slow moaners of the coastal. / I never saw them. Not once that whole frozen year . . .