In a poem called “Mortality,” two-term United States poet laureate Ada Limón writes, “When a poet says, ‘Let me / be clear,’ we are never clear.” Up for debate, but what is evident is the lucidity and beauty of her work over six poetry collections: Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, Sharks in the Rivers, Bright Dead Things, The Carrying, and The Hurting Kind. Certain works from these collections appear now in her breathtaking Startlement: New and Selected Poems, along with around 20 new poems. Startlement allows us to trace the evolution of Limón’s aesthetic over nearly two decades, from characters longing for love to work that seems to slide back the superficies of the world, allowing us to see it more fully, more particularly, lured forward by the passionate, wholehearted energy of striking lines, intelligently enjambed. Read aloud and be awed, for instance, by the sonics and depth of feeling in “Overjoyed,” in which Limón writes, “Let me be the first to admit, when I / Come across some jewel of pleasure, I too want / To squeeze that thing until even its seedy heart / evaporates like ethanol, want to throw my / bird-bones into the brush-fire until, / half-blind, all I can hear is the sound / of wings in the relentlessly delighted air.”
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