{"id":73583,"date":"2025-09-19T15:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73583\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T15:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:07:08","slug":"why-you-should-read-startlement-by-ada-limon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/73583\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Read Startlement by Ada Lim\u00f3n"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/strong>da Lim\u00f3n writes poems of haunting that also operate as poems of joy. That this is not a paradox may be what\u2019s most exemplary about her work. Through six collections, she has created a space that balances introspection and observation, identity and nature, the inner and the outer worlds. I think of \u201cThe Conditional,\u201d which begins, \u201cSay tomorrow doesn\u2019t come. \/ Say the moon becomes an icy pit. \/ Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified. \/ Say the sun\u2019s a foul black tire fire,\u201d and goes on to trace a litany of woes and missed opportunities before concluding, \u201cSay, It doesn\u2019t matter. Say, That would be \/ enough. Say you\u2019d still want this: us alive, \/ right here, feeling lucky.\u201d The poem possesses a vivid movement, not just in the emotions it encompasses, stretching from despair to acceptance, but also in the flow of language.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Conditional\u201d appears almost in the center of Startlement: New and Selected Poems<\/a>, which gathers 123 pieces, including 21 never before published in book form. To call the volume capacious would be an understatement; it represents a career overview, after all. And yet, Startlement is not a retrospective but rather a vehicle for considering Lim\u00f3n\u2019s career anew. In part, this has to do with the new work, which picks up where her most recent book, 2022\u2019s The Hurting Kind<\/a>, left off, exploring the nuances of a not-so-quiet desperation.<\/p>\n

This article appears in Issue 33 of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

An essential quality of Lim\u00f3n\u2019s work is the texture of her writing, with its astonishing range and sensitivity. \u201cOn my way to the fertility clinic,\u201d she begins \u201cThe Vulture & the Body,\u201d \u201cI pass five dead animals.\u201d In \u201cJoint Custody,\u201d she writes, \u201cWhy did I never see it for what it was: \/ abundance? Two families, two different \/ kitchen tables, two sets of rules.\u201d Here, as in \u201cThe Conditional,\u201d she sees through or past what we might consider the expected outcome into a different, and difficult, symmetry.<\/p>\n

The result is work in which form and function are inextricably connected, in which meaning derives from both the substance and the structure of the poem.\u2022<\/p>\n

STARTLEMENT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, BY ADA LIM\u00d3N<\/p>\n

\"<i>STARTLEMENT:<\/a>Credit: Milkweed EditionsRelated Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ada Lim\u00f3n writes poems of haunting that also operate as poems of joy. That this is not a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[23498,37423,359,50395,50397,50394,18,117,50398,19,17,50399,50396,50393],"class_list":{"0":"post-73583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-ada-limon","9":"tag-alta-journal-book-reviews","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-california-book-club","12":"tag-contemporary-american-poetry","13":"tag-david-l-ulin-review","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-grief-in-poetry","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-milkweed-editions","20":"tag-new-and-selected-poems-2025","21":"tag-startlement-poems"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}