Ada Limon Quotes

• Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional. Moving away from "useful" doesn't mean it isn't necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

  Ada Limon

  Grief, Moving, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think, as poets, we are in the odd position of constantly defending our art form. Which is funny and also sort of invigorating, too. No one really says, "Oh you're a lawyer? I've never understood the law. In fact, I kind of hate it." Or, "Oh you wait tables? I didn't know that was something people did." I say it can be invigorating because, on some level, we have to evaluate what we do and why we do it almost daily. We have to explain ourselves to people all the time. We have to say, "Yes, I am a unicorn, believe in me."

  Ada Limon

  Art, Hate, Believe

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• I'm always talking about how the poems I am most obsessed with are like people: complex and unknowable and with a huge capacity for many different emotions.

  Ada Limon

  People, Different, Emotion

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  8 Copy quote

• Poems have always been a place for questions for me. Not answers. And I have a lot of questions these days. One of the reasons I've felt so connected to poetry throughout the years is because it's the only art form that has breath built into it. And I need that breath now. I need that breath so much. So, yes, it is a refuge for me. Absolutely.

  Ada Limon

  Art, Reason, Refuge

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• There's so much rage in the world now and I'm finding poems to be the place where I want to stay. I rage and rage and then write a poem and return to breathing.

  Ada Limon

  Writing, World, Rage

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles and ghosts of men, and spirits behind those birds of flame. I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

  Ada Limon

  Men, Night, Doors

  Ada Limón (2010). “Sharks in the Rivers”, p.7, Milkweed Editions

  8 Copy quote

• I mean, it's hard to talk about death without realizing that's our end too, right? I am constantly aware of death. It's not that I want to be, but it's a fascination of the mind and it plays a role in why I want to live my life a certain way. The more I am aware of my mortality the better person I am and the better I am at choosing a life that is aware of its beauty.

  Ada Limon

  Mean, Play, Mind

  19 Copy quote

• I'm always telling my students that the weirdest thing is the truth. I mean, the fact that we get up in the morning and put on clothes is weird.

  Ada Limon

  Morning, Mean, Students

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I'm currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It's exciting and somewhat daunting. You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together - all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It's as if I've turned into summer itself.

  Ada Limon

  Summer, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Precise, graceful, and generous, the poems in SuperLoop, seem to be born out of a deep, careful attention and a profound compassion. Sometimes the quiet observer, sometimes the kid in the center of the messed-up carnival, these poems are the fireflies you’ve missed all winter, the longed-for return of the bees. Unaffected and inherently hopeful, Callihan’s work is as merciful as it is moving.

  Ada Limon

  Moving, Kids, Firefly

  4 Copy quote

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