by Laura Elizabeth Roberts
Ada Limón recounts both intimate and striking details of her life, delving into her innermost thoughts and tapping into her “animal-hearted” side as she leads the reader through intimate four seasons of isolation. She seems to represent her experiences from childhood and through her observant and sensitive interactions with the natural world.
Limón is highly aware of all that transpires in The Hurting Kind, just as she is in her prior collections, The Carrying which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Brilliant Dead Things which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Limón uses a variety of forms—both short and long and equally gripping—that examine anything from the impact of divorce to the loss of loved ones, frequently contrasting these experiences with moments in nature that serve as a conduit for the author’s philosophical awakening.
For instance, in the prose poem “Forsythia,” Limón draws a comparison between her dying stepmother Cynthia and the wild yellow brush known as forsythia, recalling Cynthia’s last words, “more yellow.” The speaker of the poem memorizes the name of the brush by recalling this painful memory, reciting these haunting yet artful words: “For Cynthia, for Cynthia, forsythia, forsythia, more yellow.” This memorization of plants and species, a recurring theme of the collection, is valuable to the poet; just as valuable perhaps as memorializing her family and friends (both human and non-human) through the poet’s specific identifiers.
From beholding libidinous cypress trees to finding a dead goose tangled on fence wire while picking berries, striking recollections come to life with profound lessons of grief, love and longing. The poems and prose that make up The Hurting Kind captivate the reader with rich and specific imagery, paired with an introspection and a nostalgic yearning that lingers long after the words end. Her philosophical lines in the poem “Sanctuary” express a desire to be truly seen in the same way as the natural world:
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye
of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.
To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.
Limón produces dreamily attentive lines inspired by the world surrounding her and responds to what life gifts her and steals from her through reflections of family, ancestry, friends, and lovers. Through all these memories, it is the carefree animals and trees that consistently show up, at all ebbs and flows of the year, imparting a deeper meaning and mystery to the carefully charted human experience.
Laura Elizabeth Roberts is a self-published author, poet, and content creator. She is the proud author of the poetry collection Dead Spiders Weave: Weaving Hope first imagined in the poem “Dead Spiders Weave,” then created as an account, concept, and nonfiction series found on her Instagram page and Facebook page (@d.s.weave).
