AP2 Books
Ada Limón, The Carrying: Poems
Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions
Hardcover, 120 pages, August 2018
The world asks for transcription. That has been my experience, that if I recount any small terror, I will be asked for the proof of what has happened. What was said to me, exactly? Will I be told how implausible the violence I’ve experienced is to my auditor? To be believed requires an acetic preservation of evidence, to withhold the personal account. Ada Limón’s The Carrying rejects this practice. Limón’s fifth collection emphasizes a speaker who will not be coerced into carrying language that doesn’t love her.
In The Carrying, Limón’s speaker cannot avoid confrontation. Others speak to her. Words fall out of the mouths we don’t know. But Limón doesn’t prioritize the act of transcription. She gives us…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2018