Sharks in the Rivers

From U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon, an extraordinary collection - at once urbane and earthy - that navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature. The speaker in Sharks in the Rivers finds herself multiply dislocated: from her childhood in California, from her family''s roots in Mexico, from a dying parent, from her prior self. The world is always in motion - both toward and away from us - and it is also full of risk: from sharks unexpectedly lurking beneath estuarial rivers to the dangers of New York City, where, as Limon reminds us, even rats can find themselves trapped by the garbage cans they''ve crawled into. In such a world, how should one proceed? Throughout these poems, Limon suggests that we must cleave to the world as it ''keep[s] opening before us,'' for, if we pay attention, we can be one with its complex, ephemeral, and beautiful strangeness. Loss is perpetual, and each person''s mouth ''is the same / mouth as everyone''s, all trying to ''a wound overcome by wonder,'' that allows ''the wind itself'' to be our ''own wild whisper."

Auteur

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. These include, most recently, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She is the former host of American Public Media's weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Texte du rabat

Published in 2010, Ada Limon's debut collection Sharks in the Rivers announced the arrival of a beloved poet - now the 24th US Poet Laureate, National Book Award winner, Time Magazine woman of the year 2024. An extraordinary collection - at once urbane and earthy - Sharks in the Rivers navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature.