A Poem for Ada Limón, using her words
by Pauletta Hansel
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| Ada Limón Is Named the Next Poet Laureate: Poetry, she said, can help the nation “become whole again” in a fraught, divided moment. Photo by Carla Ciuffo for The New York Times, July 12, 2022 |
Sometimes I imagine all my lovely poets
out there in the world of their bodies
having a poetry party
with dry red wine uncorked and pimento cheese
spread out on a warm lawn, or gathered
around the inside of a picture window,
still black water holding the stars,
talking poems made
in the white heat of the moment… or
written from inside the well ...
Reminding themselves that
when things are bad,
we still have our words
and each other.
And then I get on Facebook
and I see it really is true.
When the day calls for fire
and your friends have all the matches
to burn it down, Ada posts,
and I know these friends,
some of them anyway,
and the R.J Corman rail line
running by her house,
surrounded by wild things,
green trees, grasses.
But never mind my invitation
lost on the internet,
I’ll read myself in
between the lines—
“If you want to win anything—your race, your self, your life—
you have to go a little berserk”—this woman even gets good fortune cookies,
and on the radio now Ada Limón is talking
about female rage and how
sometimes we need
to step into that room and make ourselves
fully known and fully seen.
Even “The Onion” loves this woman, the railroad spike
bisecting Trump’s hypothalamus and he calls a meeting
to name her poet laureate.
When we name things we are more tender to them…
But I am also aware of the hubris of naming things.
She’s not my friend,
even though she seems to live inside my body,
more tired than I should be,
…hurting more,
my brain keeps saying
“this country hates women,
this country hates women”
And of course women are hesitant
about our subject matter.
Of course we are.
We’ve been taught that from the very beginning
to ask ourselves,
Should I take the “I” out? Should I erase my being?
But there she is, Ada Limón, singing the song
of our shared bones, and, yes,
sometimes the song
is enough.
Italicized lines are from the following sources:
Ada Limón's Facebook timeline, October 2018
https://soundcloud.com/
https://politics.theonion.com/
“The Poetry of Perseverance: An Interview with Ada Limón,” Poets & Writers September/October 2018.
The final lines reference “A New National Anthem,” The Carrying, by Ada Limon
Pauletta Hansel’s newest poetry collection is Heartbreak Tree, an exploration of the intersection of gender and place in Appalachia. Her writing is featured in Oxford American, Rattle, The New Verse News and Poetry Daily, among others. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and is 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library.