Poetry

You Are Here

Poetry in the Natural World
By
Ada Limón
Preorder now for April!

Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated writers.
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Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated contemporary writers.  

For many years, “nature poetry” has evoked images of Romantic poets standing on mountain tops. But our poetic landscape has changed dramatically, and so has our planet. Edited and introduced by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, this book challenges what we think we know about “nature poetry,” illuminating the myriad ways our landscapes—both literal and literary—are changing.

You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation’s most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more. Each poem engages with its author’s local landscape—be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop—offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States.

Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what “nature” and “poetry” are today, inviting readers to experience both anew.

Keywords
nature; nature poems; ecopoetry; ecopoetics; poet laureate; library of congress; 24th poet laureate of the United States; anthology; urban; rural; garden; birds; animals; climate change
ISBN
9781571315687
Publish Date
Pages
128
Dimensions
8.5 × 5.5 × 0.5 in
Weight
12 oz
Cover Art

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Author

Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems.

Praise and Prizes

  • “So grateful am I for Limón’s powerfully observant eye. There are many wonderful poems here and a handful of genuine masterpieces… . The Hurting Kind is packed with quiet celebrations of the quotidian… . Limón forces herself to confront, again and again in these poems, nature’s unwillingness to yield its secrets—it’s one of her primary subjects. The seemingly abundant wisdom of the natural world is really a vision of her own searching reflection… . Limón is great company in the presence of the inchoate, able and willing to stand with her readers before the frightening mysteries and hopeful uncertainties of the everyday.”

    New York Times Book Review

  • “I can always rely on an Ada Limón poem to give me hope, but Limón’s poems don’t give us the kind of facile Hallmark hope; rather, her hope is hard-earned, even laced with grief or happiness … Limón is a master at making a simple idea (that of hindsight, seeing the bright side of things) askew. ‘And so I have/two brains now,’ she writes. ‘Two entirely different brains.’ Limón gives us two brains in her poems too, revealing new ways to view the world.”

    Victoria Chang
    New York Times Magazine

  • “In her sixth collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón seeks to find the intimate connections between the seemingly disparate in the everyday: humans and the natural world, the living and the dead, the intellectual and the spiritual. The collection’s title is apt—it is a testament to the innate power of feeling, whether grief, rage, or tenderness. For Limón, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, who declares herself ‘too sensitive, a weeper… the hurting kind,’ even the seemingly banal facets of our existence deserve not only observation, but also empathy and amazement.”

    TIME Magazine
    “100 Must Read Books of 2022”

  • “Limón’s poems are unique for the deep attention they pay to both the world’s wounds and its redemptive beauty. In otherwise dark times, they have the power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires.”

    The Ezra Klein Show

  • “[Ada Limón] is one of my all-time favorite writers, someone whose work I return to again and again for solace, inspiration, and truth.”

    Nicole Chung
    The Atlantic

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