THE CARRYING

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 2019Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation . . . a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability' Tracy K. Smith Guardian'Vulnerable tender acute . . . The Carrying is a gift' Natasha Trethewey Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate'Exquisite poems' Roxane GayFrom National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ada Limón comes The Carrying - her most powerful collection yet.Vulnerable tender acute these are serious poems brave poems exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility - 'What if instead of carrying / a child I am supposed to carry grief?' - and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: 'Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza something brutal.' And still Limón shows us as ever the persistence of hunger love and joy the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. 'Fine then / I'll take it' she writes. 'I'll take it all.'The Carrying leads us deeper towards the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.