Carrying

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 2019

Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation . . . a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability'' Tracy K. Smith, Guardian

''Vulnerable, tender, acute . . . The Carrying is a gift'' Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate

''Exquisite poems'' Roxane Gay

From National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ada Limón comes The Carrying - her most powerful collection yet.

Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility - ''What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?'' - and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: ''Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.'' And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. ''Fine then, / I''ll take it,'' she writes. ''I''ll take it all.''

The Carrying leads us deeper towards the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.