Ada Limón, the 24th United States Poet Laureate, has a remarkable gift for articulating the messy, beautiful, and often difficult parts of being human—exploring themes of love, loss, grief, and our essential connection to the natural world.
She has a unique ability to find the profound in the everyday, from a groundhog in her garden to the vastness of the cosmos.
Her newest work, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, is a collection spanning two decades of her career.
The word "startlement," as she explains in this conversation, can be a collective noun for poems—like a "murder of crows" or a "murmuration of starlings." It's a concept that speaks to the sudden, unexpected jolt of wonder and awe that poetry can inspire, that moment of deep attention where we are reminded of our shared existence and the vibrant, strange beauty of life itself.
The book itself is retrospective that spans two decades. That’s six books of poetry as well as 21 remarkable new poems.
Limón's poetry is an invitation to meet the world with an open mind — but also an open heart. She encourages us to embrace our "strangeness" and our tenderness, and to bear witness to the arc of all we know.
In a world that often moves too fast, she reminds us of the power of slowing down and simply paying attention.
To explore the practice of "startlement" with the poet herself, discussing how her work helps us decenter ourselves and foster a deeper curiosity about our place in the universe is a rare honor.
But as we see, her poetry speaks to so many the world over because she is a poet of sincere goals to be with us in moving through contentious and uncertain times with a measure of hope, humor and compassion.
Guest: Ada Limón
Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was 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 the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a 2024 Time Magazine Woman of the Year. She is the author of two picture books, In Praise of Mystery as well as And, Too, The Fox, and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.
Learn more about Ada Limón here.
