The Hurting Kind

By far Limón’s most self- and world-examining book, The Hurting Kind captures the hidden, marginal forces of kindness and suffering around us … a set of astoundingly moving poems in which the self becomes an inclusive vehicle for bridging the hurting gaps between generations, ideas and living things … If you only read one book this autumn, make it this one * Guardian *I can always rely on an Ada Limón poem to give me hope, but Limón’s poems don’t give us the kind of facile Hallmark hope; rather, her hope is hard-earned, even laced with grief or happiness … Limón is a master at making a simple idea (that of hindsight, seeing the bright side of things) askew. “And so I have/two brains now,” she writes. “Two entirely different brains.” Limón gives us two brains in her poems, too, revealing new ways to view the world – Victoria Chang * New York Times Magazine *In one of Ada Limón’s early poems, she asks, “Shouldn’t we make fire out of everyday things?” For the past 16 years, that’s exactly what she’s done. [She is] fearlessly confessional and technically brilliant * Washington Post *These poems home in on how grief makes us human … [Limón] reminds readers that we are nothing without connection. If you haven’t read poetry in a while, this volume might be what you need to reconnect with the form * Los Angeles Times *Brilliant … Throughout is the trademark wonder, and blown-out perceptivity, underscoring Limón’s clarion melancholy * San Francisco Chronicle *Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation – Tracy K. Smith * Guardian *

Ada Limon is the author of The Hurting Kind, as well as five other collections of poems. These include, most recently, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limon is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She is the host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

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