Startlement : new and selected poems / Ada Limón.

By:

Limón, Ada [author.]

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2025Edition: First editionDescription: 203 pages ; 22 cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9781639550517

Uniform titles:

Startlement (Compilation)

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Poetry.

Additional physical formats: Online version:: Startlement.Summary: "New and selected poems by Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States"-- Provided by publisher.Summary: An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America’s most celebrated living writers. Drawing from six previously published books—including widely acclaimed collections The Hurting Kind, The Carrying, and Bright Dead Things—as well as vibrant new work, Startlement exalts the mysterious. With a tender curiosity, Ada Limón wades into potent unknowns—the strangeness of our brief human lives, the ever-changing nature of the universe—and emerges each time with new revelations about our place in the world. Both a lush overview of her work and a powerful narrative of a poet’s life, this curation embodies Limón’s capacity for “deep attention,” her “power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires” (The New York Times). From the chaos of youthful desire, to the waxing of love and loss, to the precarity of our environment, to the stars and beyond, Limón’s poetry bears witness to the arc of all we know with patient lyricism and humble wonder.--Amazon.com.

List(s) this item appears in: New Adult Nonfiction

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Non-Fiction	New Books	811.6 LIM	Available		36748002633230

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

As seen on NPR'S "Fresh Air"

A Los Angeles Times "Most Anticipated"

A USA TODAY "Must Read Poetry"

An Observer Best Holiday Book

" Startlement is a book of rare treasures. With lyrical mastery and intimate storytelling, Limón's poetry reveals new ways of paying attention. This powerful collection is a gift."--Amy Tan

An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America's most celebrated living writers.

Drawing from six previously published books--including widely acclaimed collections The Hurting Kind , The Carrying , and Bright Dead Things --as well as vibrant new work, Startlement exalts the mysterious. With a tender curiosity, Ada Limón wades into potent unknowns--the strangeness of our brief human lives, the ever-changing nature of the universe--and emerges each time with new revelations about our place in the world.

Both a lush overview of her work and a powerful narrative of a poet's life, this curation embodies Limón's capacity for "deep attention," her "power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires" (The New York Times). From the chaos of youthful desire, to the waxing of love and loss, to the precarity of our environment, to the stars and beyond, Limón's poetry bears witness to the arc of all we know with patient lyricism and humble wonder.

"A poet of ecstatic revelation" (Tracy K. Smith), Limón encourages us to meet our shared futures with open and hungry hearts, assuring "What we are becoming, we are / becoming together."

"New and selected poems by Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States"-- Provided by publisher.

An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America’s most celebrated living writers. Drawing from six previously published books—including widely acclaimed collections The Hurting Kind, The Carrying, and Bright Dead Things—as well as vibrant new work, Startlement exalts the mysterious. With a tender curiosity, Ada Limón wades into potent unknowns—the strangeness of our brief human lives, the ever-changing nature of the universe—and emerges each time with new revelations about our place in the world. Both a lush overview of her work and a powerful narrative of a poet’s life, this curation embodies Limón’s capacity for “deep attention,” her “power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires” (The New York Times). From the chaos of youthful desire, to the waxing of love and loss, to the precarity of our environment, to the stars and beyond, Limón’s poetry bears witness to the arc of all we know with patient lyricism and humble wonder.--Amazon.com.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

From Lucky Wreck
First Lunch with Relative Stranger Mister You (3)
Little Day (6)
A Little Distantly, As One Should (7)
This Darkness (11)
The Echo Sounder (12)
Farmers' Almanac (16)
Miles Per Hour (18)
The Firemen Are Dancing (20)
Little Monogamy (21)
The Unbearable (22)
The Spider Web (23)
The Lessing Table (30)
All Kinds of Shipwrecks (31)
Centerfold (32)
The Frontier of Never Leaving (33)
From This Big Fake World
Prologue: This Big Fake World (37)
He Wishes for Things Smaller (38)
His Wife Was Not Something He Could Hang on the Tree Ideal Fire (41)
On a Business Trip He Contemplates Her Closet (42)
After Her Husband Left Her, She Went to Work at the Hardware Store (43)
At the Hardware Store (44)
The Note He Does Not Leave (45)
He Has Big Thoughts While His Wife Is Sleeping (46)
The Hardware Lady Repeats Herself (47)
He Renames the House After His Own (48)
Our Hero Sits at Home Alone and So Does the Hardware Lady (49)
The Hardware Lady Watches as Our Hero Comes Close (51)
Epilogue: This Big Fake World (52)
From Sharks in the Rivers
Sharks in the Rivers (55)
Flood Coming (57)
Diagnosis: Even the Stillaguamish River Cannot Stop Time (58)
Overjoyed (59)
Crush (60)
The New World of Beauty (61)
The Russian River (63)
Marketing Life for Those of Us Left (64)
Hardworking Agreement with a Wednesday (66)
Homesick (68)
Ways to Ease Your Animal Mind (69)
The Crossing (70)
The Same Thing (72)
Bird Bound for a Good World (74)
Drowning in Paradise (76)
To the Busted Among Us (77)
From Bright Dead Things
How to Triumph Like a Girl (81)
During the Impossible Age of Everyone (82)
The Last Move (83)
How Far Away We Are (85)
The Quiet Machine (86)
I Remember the Carrots (87)
Someplace Like Montana (88)
State Bird (90)
Downhearted (91)
What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use (92)
Cower (93)
Relentless (94)
The Riveter (96)
After You Toss Around the Ashes (98)
Torn (99)
Adaptation (100)
The Conditional (101)
From The Carrying
Ancestors (105)
The Leash (106)
The Raincoat (107)
The Vulture & the Body (108)
Dandelion Insomnia (110)
Dead Stars (111)
What I Want to Remember (113)
Overpass (115)
Wonder Woman (116)
The Real Reason (117)
The Year of the Goldfinches (119)
Sundown & All the Damage Done (120)
A New National Anthem (121)
The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual (123)
Instructions on Not Giving Up (125)
Carrying (126)
What I Didn't Know Before (127)
Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance (128)
Losing (129)
The Last Drop (130)
From The Hurting Kind
Give Me This (133)
Sanctuary (134)
A Good Story (135)
Forsythia (136)
And, Too, the Fox (137)
The Magnificent Frigatebird (138)
The First Fish (139)
Joint Custody (140)
Cyrus & the Snakes (141)
Calling Things What They Are (143)
Open Water (144)
Privacy (145)
Sports (146)
Proof (148)
Heart on Fire (149)
My Father's Mustache (150)
The Hurting Kind (151)
Against Nostalgia (158)
Salvage (159)
The End of Poetry (160)
Startlement
The Endlessness (163)
Hell or High Water (164)
While Everything Else Was Falling Apart (166)
Strange Refuge (167)
This One Goes Out To (169)
Field (171)
Mortality (172)
Sea Turtle (173)
Crow's-Feet (175)
Let Loose (176)
How to Measure Distance (177)
Literary Theory (182)
Even Here It Is Happening (183)
The Geography of Mountains (184)
Curtain Call (187)
Every Blooming Thing (190)
On Earth as It Is on Earth (191)
In the End, Everything Gives (192)
Startlement (194)
The Origin Revisited (195)
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa (197)
Notes on New Poems (199)
Acknowledgments for New Poems (201)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This latest book from U.S. Poet Laureate Limón (The Hurting Kind) presents selections from her previous volumes alongside new poems. It is a well-edited grouping of work that serves as an introduction for those unfamiliar with Limón's writing and, for her fans, an access point for earlier poems from out-of-print books. Limón's poetry often rests on keenly observed elements of nature and the connections between animals, plants, and human thought and behavior. Because the poems span 20 years, it is possible to identify characters and themes that Limón revisits again and again, providing a view of how the poet has wrestled over time with grief, aging, and memory. While many of the poems are intensely personal, focusing on family relationships and inner struggles, Limón's ability to connect the individual to the universal is fully displayed here. The more recent poems show this to impressive effect, particularly the closing poem, 2023's "In Praise of Mystery," which was inscribed on a NASA space probe to be sent to one of Jupiter's moons. VERDICT An essential choice for any collection of modern American poetry, suitable for a broad audience.--Rebecca Brody

Publishers Weekly Review

In a retrospective spanning two decades, former U.S. poet laureate Limón (The Hurting Kind) captures the mind and soul with exquisite linguistic mastery and vision that will compel readers to earmark every other sentence. Limón raises the standards for elegy, needling the heart with surgical, diaphanous, and cathartic reverie. She exemplifies the fortitude and compassion of her grandfather, who "carried that snake to the cactus,/ where all sharp things could stay safe" and delights in the casual morbidity of her grandmother, who tells her "of all the traffic accidents/ as if she was reading a menu to me out loud." The poet harnesses perseverance through perspective ("A friend says the best way to love the world is to think of leaving"), as well as transcendentalism ("She thinks she can almost hear it,/ the snow falling, deliberate proof/ that even the sky wants to return and return/ to this shattering world"). Limón's voice is humble despite its nearly omniscient acuity, weaving her experience into the greater human condition. With its devastating wit, magnetic power, and arresting ingenuity, this volume is one of a kind. (Sept.)