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Morning Open Thread: Ada Limón’s Instructions on Not Giving Up [1]
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Date: 2023-05-01
‘Love ends. But what if it doesn’t?’ – Ada Limón, from “The Hurting Kind”
‘I want to give you something, or
I want to take something from you.
But I want to feel the exchange,
the warm hand on the shoulder,
the song coming out and the ear
holding onto it.’
― Ada Limon, U.S. Poet Laureate,
from “How Far Away We Are”
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There’s a bigger buzz in the house before the lights dim when what the audience has come for will be live instead of on film. Because however great a movie is, it will always be the same no matter how many times you see it. Your perception of the film may change because of the changes getting older make in you, but what’s on the screen doesn’t.
It had been some time since I’d felt that buzz – Covid has kept us away from crowds, and we’d been perceiving the world through the Internet, the TV, the radio, and the printed word.
We were sitting in those seats because of a lucky chance. Our reserved lodging wasn’t ready when we arrived for our annual anniversary getaway, so my husband picked up a couple of the area’s weekly newspapers from the lobby before we did a drive-around to see what was the same, and what had changed. We could see that some of our favorite places which had survived the economic downturn from the pandemic through our 2022 visit, hadn’t been able to keep going – there were some empty storefronts, and closed restaurants, or new businesses had replaced them. Some of the roads were still under repair from this year’s flood damage.
We did get into our home away from home – a “cottage” – really the downstairs half of a duplex, one of half a dozen, each unique, making a tiny village around a small but enchanting garden with a “stream” and a pond full of koi, surrounded by roses and other flowering plants and a few trees. Peace always settles over us after all our gear has been distributed, and we just sit breathing in the sunlight and the quiet. And then, little by little, we start thinking we need to plan.
So we were looking through the weeklies, and an ad caught my eye. There were a series of events at a hall at UCSB (University of California Santa Barbara), and one of them was a poetry reading and discussion by 24th Poet Laureate of the United States Ada Limón on Tuesday night, April 25.
The U.S. Poets Laureate are appointed by the Librarian of Congress, for a one-year term, with an option for a second year that is pretty much a given. Carla Hayden, the current Librarian of Congress, was appointed by Barack Obama in 2016 for her ten year term of office. Her choices for Poet Laureate have been Tracy K. Smith (2017-2019), followed by Joy Harjo, whose highly successful term was extended to a third year (2019-2021), and Ada Limón in 2022.
The original title for poets connected with the Library of Congress when the program began in 1937 was “U.S. Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” – quite the mouthful – so it was changed in 1985 to “U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress” (a by-committee title if ever I saw one). The first official U.S. Poet Laureate was Robert Penn Warren (1986-1987). In all, there have been 39 Consultants in Poetry attached to the Library of Congress –26 of them have been men, 13 have been women, but only 8 of them have not been white, so it’s clear that Carla Hayden is promoting women of color to add more diversity to this line of U.S. poets. However, she didn’t pick these three women just for their racial heritage and their gender – they are outstanding poets chosen first for their literary merit.
So we checked – there were a few seats left at the back of the hall for Tuesday’s event, and we quickly ordered two tickets online. Tuesday, we drove almost 40 miles from Solvang to the UCSB campus, then people-watched while waiting – in our age category there were mostly women, then some mid-life groups and couples, and a few families with kids. However, tickets for those with student IDs were free, so they made up a substantial majority of the audience.
A poetry contest for local middle and high school students had been held for National Poetry Month, and the two winners read their poems before the main event – both girls had written excellent poems, and deserved the enthusiastic rounds of applause which greeted their readings.
Then Ada Limón was introduced – the place erupted in applause, whistles, foot-stomping, and shouts. I’ve never been in a room so full of people with such enthusiasm for poetry before.
She opened by telling us about “getting the call” offering her the chance to be a U.S. Poet Laureate, and something about the whirlwind since. NASA asked her to write a short poem to be emblazoned on the side of the rocket that will be going later this year to Jupiter’s moon Europa. She will give this poem’s first public reading at a press conference at the Library of Congress in June. Alas, she asked NASA if she could borrow a space suit for the reading, but they turned her down.
She spoke about crisscrossing the country giving readings and talks. And the great news that Librarian Carla Hayden asked her to remain Poet Laureate for two more years instead of just one, and Limón has accepted.
Before each of the poems she read, she told a little about what had inspired it – a real insight into her work. At heart, she is a storyteller, and that I believe has played a big part in her success – her poems are easy to connect with. There were poems about her childhood and student days, about the losses of beloved family members, a couple of poems touching on racism and violence, some about how her life changed when she fell in love with the man she would marry, especially since he works with race horses – horses are a recurring theme in her poetry ever since.
She got a standing ovation at the end of the evening. If there had been a curtain, she would have had to take at least three curtain calls.
So here’s one more reason to Get Out the Vote for the coming presidential election: whoever wins will appoint the next Librarian of Congress when Carla Hayden’s term runs out. Do we really want anyone from the Book-Banning Party to make that decision?
Here are some of Ada Limón’s poems, in no particular order – some she read that night, and some she didn’t but they are long-time favorites of mine. I was delighted to discover videos are available on YouTube from her readings at several events, should you want to see her in action.
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How to Triumph Like a Girl
by Ada Limón
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.
“How to Triumph Like a Girl” from Bright Dead Things, © 2015 by Ada Limón – Milkweed Editions
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Before
by Ada Limón
No shoes and a glossy
red helmet, I rode
on the back of my dad’s
Harley at seven years old.
Before the divorce.
Before the new apartment.
Before the new marriage.
Before the apple tree.
Before the ceramics in the garbage.
Before the dog’s chain.
Before the koi were all eaten
by the crane. Before the road
between us, there was the road
beneath us, and I was just
big enough not to let go:
Henno Road, creek just below,
rough wind, chicken legs,
and I never knew survival
was like that. If you live,
you look back and beg
for it again, the hazardous
bliss before you know
what you would miss.
[END]
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