Bright Dead Things

August 24, 2015
Limón (Sharks in the Rivers) goes into deep introspection mode in a fourth collection in which her speakers struggle with loss and alienation. As her poems move across varied geographies (New York, Kentucky, California), Limón narrates experiences in bewildering landscapes that should otherwise feel familiar. Perhaps feelings of alienation result from intersections of identity; perhaps they are the cost of memory, a theme woven through each of the collection’s four sections. Memory inhibits Limón’s speakers’ acclimation to change: “You’re the muscle/ I cut from the bone and still the bone remembers.” Alienated, she returns to places and memories that are not familiar. “Bellow” exemplifies a palpable grief over feelings of loss and lost-ness. In it, Limón’s ungendered speaker, estranged from any surroundings, is rendered unable to communicate feelings of loss. Using a litany of dark imagery, Limón’s speaker maps where language fails, ending the poem with the insinuation of an undefinable, haunting sound, as if the speaker is a wandering phantom. In “Home Fires,” the poet wonders, “How could I have imagined this? Mortal me,/ brutal disaster born out of so much greed.” Recurring instances of anxiety about mortality in Limón’s poems complicate experiences so richly written and felt.

Starred review from June 1, 2015

In her newest volume of poems, Limon (Sharks in the Rivers) delves into the divided self--self separated by geography, by loss, by change, by circumstance. In "Torn," she says "something/ that loves itself so much it moves across/ the boundaries of death to touch itself/ once more, to praise both divided sides/ equally...." Limon's landscape is Brooklyn, California, and the horsey and blue-grassy hills of Kentucky, and her writing is intensely intimate and wild, softly sensual and bold. In the mostly lyric narratives, with an occasional prose poem included, loss and redemption are apparent, and love--whether tough love or easy love--is resilient. "How good it is to love/ live things, even when what they've done/ is terrible, how much we each want to be...turned loose/ into our own wide open without a single/ harness of sin to stop us." VERDICT Generous of heart, intricate and accessible, the poems in this book are wondrous and deeply moving.--Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

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