The speaker in this extraordinary collection finds herself multiply dislocated: from her childhood in California, from her family's roots in Mexico, from a dying parent, from her prior self. The world is always in motion -- both toward and away from us--and it is also full of risk: from sharks unexpectedly lurking beneath estuarial rivers to the dangers of New York City, where, as Limon reminds us, even rats find themselves trapped by the garbage cans they've crawled into. In such a world, how should one proceed? Throughout Sharks in the Rivers, Limon suggests that we must cleave to the world as it "keep[s] opening before us," for, if we pay attention, we can be one with its complex, ephemeral, and beautiful strangeness. Loss is perpetual, and each person's mouth "is the same / mouth as everyone's, all trying to say the same thing." For Limon, it's the saying--individual and collective -- that transforms each of us into "a wound overcome by wonder," that allows "the wind itself" to be our "own wild whisper."

About the Author
Ada Limon is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems. These include, most recently, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limon is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She is the former host of American Public Media's weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.


Book Information
ISBN 9781571314383
Author Ada Limon
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Milkweed Editions
Publisher Milkweed Editions
Weight(grams) 170g