Back Draft: Ada Limón

There’s no shortage of poems about nature — pastorals that capture the beauty of landscapes, odes that pay tribute to the passage of the seasons. Less common, however, are poems that embody the dark heart of the wilderness, leading us toward both what blossoms and what decays.

In “Thorns,” a poem from Ada Limón’s newest collection, The Hurting Kind, the speaker encounters death and abruptly turns away. It’s a memory from early childhood, yet it has none of the dusty quality of remembrance; the narrative is as sharp as any fresh jolt of pain. It’s the kind of poem for which Limón has become famous, with clear storytelling, vivid visuals, and a final turn that snaps you like a twig.

On July 12, 2022, Limón was named the twenty-fourth poet laureate of the United States. When I spoke with her over the phone a few weeks earlier, she was sitting at home in Lexington, Kentucky. It was the start of spring, and perennials had begun sprouting from the soil. Looking out the window, she described to me what was already growing, though it was early in the season and, she noted, there was still much to come.

— Ben Purkert for Guernica

Guernica: What does the process of starting a poem look like for you?

Typically it begins with an obsession. Something that keeps returning to me, whether it’s a sound, or an image, or an idea, or even just one word. Then I’ll start to unravel it, or