Ada Limón: Connected to the Universe

I’ve been reading Ada Limón’s poetry since 2005, when she won the Autumn House Poetry Prize for her first collection, Lucky Wreck. That book anthologized the complicated feelings that can arise in relationships. The opening poem, “First Lunch with Relative Stranger Mister You,” heralded a kind of writing that spoke to me: “We solved the problem of the wind / with an orange. / Now we’ve got the problem of the orange.”

Since then, all of Limón’s books have found a home on my bookshelf, each volume a heartfelt reckoning of what it is be alive. In her collections, I find a grace that demonstrates her versatility and wisdom as well as a “surrendering.” She explains that the central question of her work is, “How do we live in the world?” Yet she’s a poet as comfortable with questions as with answers.

Limón’s most recent collection, The Carrying, is scheduled for release by Milkweed Editions in August. She is also the author of Bright Dead Things, Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times.

Limón spoke to me on what was, in New York City, a cloudy day. At my kitchen table, the curtains in my emptying Brooklyn apartment blew back and forth, giving the interview an airy, ghost-like feel. I was about to move to Arizona, and knowing that Limón used to be a New Yorker herself, I wanted to ask not only about The Carrying, but also about her new life, what it means to wander and to take risks.

–Diana Delgado for Guernica

Guernica: You used to live in New York, and now you’re in Kentucky. Has that move changed you as a writer?

I really believe that New York City is the best city in the world. I adore it. But