Bright Dead Things: Poems

Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately disorderly, and marvelous, and ours. A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the various ways the speaker’s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love.

Limon has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a huge beating genius machine striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying, the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limon’s work is consistently generous and accessible-though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.