I still want to kill the carrots because I can. There is magic in the ability to tear living carrots from the ground and still watch them glow neon:

In “I Remember the Carrots” the speaker recalls the “bright dead things” of her childhood. Beauty is found in everything from roadkill to the dogs of America, and more importantly, Limón asserts, the self is found in these beautiful things. The narrative writing straddles the accessible and philosophical in a way only a masterful poet can. In the prose poem, “The Quiet Machine” the speaker navigates the quieter parts of the country, by trying to emulate their inwardness:Īnswer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on theįloor in the kitchen and pretend I’m not home when people knock. In a mix of prose and verse poems, an unpretentious verisimilitude evades. We are not mere observers of these wonders, but instead a part of the conversation. Perhaps the most enticing aspect of poems like these is Limón’s ability to pull the reader into the poem. The speaker imagines how it would feel to have the heart of a horse: With a vast scope that takes its readers from Kentucky to Brooklyn and through the gaucheries of youth to the resigned wisdom of womanhood, this collection is a testament to the lasting wonderment of American poetry.Ī seasoned poet having released Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers, Limón immediately asserts her aplomb in the opening “How to Triumph like a Girl.” In a style reminiscent of Sharon Olds, the poem communicates ideas of feminism and oneness with gusto. In Ada Limón’s “ Miracle Fish,” she beckons her readers to “think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe.” Surely, Limón’s Bright Dead Things (2015) is a direct answer to such a command.

Bright dead things poems