{"id":35981,"date":"2021-02-05T12:42:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=35981"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:16:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:16:45","slug":"a-conversation-with-ada-limon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/a-conversation-with-ada-limon\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 89: A Conversation with Ada Lim\u00f3n"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Found in\u00a0Willow Springs\u00a0<\/em>89<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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FEBRUARY 5TH, 2021<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

POLLY BUCKINGHAM, MIRIUM ARTEAGA, TORI THURMOND, SARAH KERSEY, & KYLE BEAM<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH ADA LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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https:\/\/hugohouse.org\/events\/word-works-ada-limon\/<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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WEAVING NATURAL IMAGERY<\/strong> with memories of the past and moments of the present, Ada Lim\u00f3n\u2019s work explores both gender and race while incorporating elements of the surreal. The Los Angeles Review<\/em> describes her work as being filled with \u201cdiscovery, and rediscovery of self and world.\u201d Lim\u00f3n\u2019s poems guide her reader through her speaker\u2019s self-exploration and encourage them to find beauty in the unconventional\u2014in the way a neighbor mows his farm, in an 8-pound female horse heart, in a lady groundhog eating a tomato.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ada Lim\u00f3n is the author of The Carrying<\/em> (2018), the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Bright Dead Things<\/em> (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award; Sharks in the Rivers<\/em> (2010); Lucky Wreck<\/em> (2006); and This Big Fake World<\/em> (2006). Her new book, The Hurting Kind<\/em>, is expected from Milkweed Editions in May of 2022. Lim\u00f3n was a recent recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, and she teaches remotely from Lexington, Kentucky, where she also hosts The Slowdown, a poetry-focused podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ada Lim\u00f3n agreed to meet with us over Zoom during the winter of 2020. Amid a year of isolation, our conversation surrounding the importance of underrepresented voices in literature, poetic process, and the evolution of poetic style provided a much-needed sense of togetherness. Lim\u00f3n was candid, encouraging, and realistically hopeful while she allowed us into her world for a few hours on a chilly afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TORI THURMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something that I love about your collections is the variety of form. I read in a past interview of yours that breath is really important when writing poetry. Does the incorporation of breath in your poetry determine the form of each poem or is that a different process for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ADA LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, they\u2019re completely aligned. Breath, for me, determines how the poem is read, where we want the reader to breathe, where we as the writer breathe. Allowing for the line breaks, caesuras in the middle of the line, stanza breaks, all of that, where the white space is, is always allowing for breath. In some ways, they operate like stage directions. Once I\u2019ve actually completed the poem, when I hand it to a reader, they should be able to read it in a similar manner to how I\u2019ve placed it on the page and how I intend it to be read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MIRIUM ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Lucky Wreck<\/em>, there were a lot of shorter, haiku-like poems. How does breath operate in those?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love that you asked about Lucky Wreck<\/em>. It\u2019s coming up on its 15th anniversary. Which is crazy because I feel like I\u2019m not that old, right? Those little poems were meant to be like Post-It notes within the book, notes to myself on some level, moments to stop, especially after a longer poem or maybe a more complex poem or a poem that had a heavy subject matter. They were like little breaths, little breaks throughout the book, a place to land after a longer journey\u2014the psychological journey of a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last poem, \u201cThirteen Feral Cats,\u201d which is all one poem in thirteen sections, needed to be the ending, the reason for the book. It\u2019s almost backwards in some ways, like it\u2019s built to have some lightness, some cleverness, some joy of living, but that last section confronts mortality in a larger way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucky Wreck<\/em> was the first manuscript I put together as a manuscript; I would type into one word document. I wrote each poem individually, but I started to see them as a collection right off the bat. I started putting them together, and then \u201cThirteen Feral Cats\u201d came at the end, and it felt like, \u201cOh right, it\u2019s supposed be this journey I\u2019m working through, and then here is the reason. My stepmother was diagnosed with cancer. How do I live with this information? And how do these thirteen feral cats play into what it is to want something, to live and also want to tame something?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POLLY BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ordered your books since then in that way, or do you say, \u201cI have enough. I\u2019m going make a book\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a combination. Bright Dead Things<\/em>, Lucky Wreck<\/em> and Sharks in the Rivers<\/em> all started as one poem at a time. Then I start to see them talking to each other, and I start to lay them next to each other and  I think, \u201cIf this is a manuscript, what am I missing?\u201d It felt like Lucky Wreck<\/em> was actually missing some of that real straightforward conversation about death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now when I build a manuscript, I think, \u201cOkay, if this is a book and these poems are connected, what are the parts I\u2019m leaving out? What are the things I\u2019m scared to say? What are the things I need to push myself into, whether it be scary or hard or maybe even joyful?\u201d The hardest poem to write is a joyful poem or a contented poem. I mean, what does a contented poem look like? There are times when I start to put together a manuscript and I think, \u201cOh, this needs more contentment. I\u2019m content. I have joy. I look to see what parts are missing, and then I start to fill in those gaps and create a book that has a sense of wholeness to it. I\u2019ve never wanted my books to be just a collection of poems. They\u2019ve always felt like they needed a heart, that they needed a core, and that there was some sort of, for lack of a better word, narrative arc for the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SARAH KERSEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have that thirteen-part poem in Lucky Wreck,<\/em> and you also have a fifteen-part poem in Sharks in the Rivers<\/em> called \u201cFifteen Balls of Feathers.\u201d How do you decide when to include section breaks in poems and when to use stanza breaks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both of those poems, each section acts as if it\u2019s an individual poem, but it\u2019s going to be more kinetic and vibrant if it\u2019s part of the whole. It\u2019s sort of about whether or not it can actually exist outside of the poem. Whereas with a stanza break, there\u2019s no question that it needs to be connected, and so it\u2019s giving into the leaps the brain makes. The section breaks feel more like that sort of pinging, where the brain goes over here then over here, whereas the stanzas, there might be a little pause, but the brain is still on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve talked a lot about silence in your poems, and we were talking earlier about those smaller poems with a lot of space around them. I thought of Lorca, who you mention in The Carrying<\/em>. I wonder if you could speak to his influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, Lorca has been a big influence on me, and one part of that is those leaps. That\u2019s one thing Lorca has always been really wonderful at, trusting the reader to go with him when he goes into a new realm. It\u2019s no wonder that Salvador Dal\u00ed and Federico Lorca were partners and friends, or whatever their relationship was. That giving into the reality has always been a big influence on my work. When I allow my brain to go, \u201cOkay, this is just where it\u2019s going,\u201d instead of stopping myself and going, \u201cThis is too weird,\u201d the Lorca mentor in my mind says, \u201cGo with it. Go with it.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s always about the silence or the breath, but more about trusting the weirdness of the self. The weirdness of the self might lead you to some place that might not be factual, but it might be truthful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KYLE BEAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could you speak to sectioning in your collections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With The Carrying<\/em>, I started reading it as all one section. I was going through fertility treatments, but that wasn\u2019t necessarily the entire thrust of the book. I needed there to be a place where you could close the door on that and talk about a poem like \u201cA New National Anthem\u201d or \u201cThe Contract Says: We\u2019d Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual.\u201d Even though our emotional state as we\u2019re writing any manuscript is going to color an entire manuscript, I still felt that there were moments where I wasn\u2019t thinking about my own fertility. I needed those moments of breaking. Even though that was the big impulse for the book, I didn\u2019t want it to be the only engine. Those sections became a safe place for me to not always talk about the exact thing that was troubling me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first section of Bright Dead Things<\/em>, I\u2019m in Kentucky. Why am I here? Why am I writing? And then the second section is dealing with what came before, which was the death of my stepmother, and I probably would not have been in Kentucky if it wasn\u2019t for that. Then the third section feels like a return to the past, all the things and all the people we carry with us. There\u2019s moments of talking about the exes, talking about past loves. Who are we when we enter a new relationship? Do we bring all the people who have been in a relationship with us behind us? We do. Sometimes you notice it. Sometimes you wish you didn\u2019t. Then the fourth section was like, \u201cWhat is it to be in a relationship?\u201d and having that complicated. It ends in love poems. They\u2019re less than smooth; they\u2019re a little distressed in a way that I hope is truthful. Once I saw the organization for that manuscript happening, I was like, \u201cOh, this is exactly what it means, what it needs to be.\u201d Also, once I realized there were poems about what the ex would bring to the relationship, I thought, \u201cThat person\u2019s going to need a poem,\u201d and I allowed myself to explore that. Sometimes the sections allow me to do what I was talking about earlier, which is to give myself prompts to explore something that I haven\u2019t thought about or maybe haven\u2019t even thought was worthy of a poetic impulse until I\u2019ve seen what\u2019s already there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KERSEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned that the first section of Bright Dead Things<\/em> is a lot about your move to Kentucky. I was wondering how place and physical space influence your poems and if you set out to write poems about Kentucky, or did those happen without intention?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landscape is really important in my work. If I were to say that there are themes in my work, in general, it would be the natural world and animals. Bright Dead Things<\/em> is the first book that was written entirely outside of New York, so it does have a certain amount of greenness and the natural world, whereas with Sharks in the Rivers<\/em>, there\u2019s the natural world\u2014the mention of the Stillaguamish, and my family lived in Stanwood, Washington\u2014but, at the same time, the rivers and the animals felt almost metaphorical. In Bright Dead Things<\/em> they become more real, partly because I was living among them. It\u2019s a different experience to talk about a horse when you\u2019re in a high-rise office in the middle of Times Square than it is to talk about a horse while you\u2019re actually looking out the window at a horse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were two things that moving to Kentucky gave me that I didn\u2019t have in New York. One was that greenness and that true interaction with the natural world and the second one was the time to interact with it. Because when you live in a big city, especially in New York, most of your time is spent working to pay to live in that city. I had huge jobs. I was the creative services director for Travel + Leisure Magazine,<\/em> and I left my house at 7:30 a.m. and came home at 7:30 p.m. or 8:00 p.m. When I moved out and started freelancing, my relationship to nature changed because I was out in it almost daily. The landscape became much more of my home. It went away from metaphor and became real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think it\u2019s necessary or beneficial for any poet or writer to put themselves into the natural world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were to say what is good for writers, I would say, no matter where you are, recognize the bioregional area you\u2019re in. I actually think that you could live in Brooklyn and have an incredible relationship with trees and plants and animals. I don\u2019t think I had that because I was so distant in terms of time, but if you have time to walk in the botanical gardens, to walk in the parks\u2014all of those things\u2014you can have an incredible relationship with it. It\u2019s really important, as human beings, for all of us to be in nature. We can talk about ecopoetics or nature poetry, but it\u2019s really important just to recognize the plants and animals that surround us and are part of our community, the non-human animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I love about your work is that odd combination between the Spanish surrealist vein and that gritty I\u2019m-gonna-take-control-of-things voice, which is also a more narrative strain. I noticed it in The Carrying<\/em>. Would you speak to those two competing voices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are times where I\u2019m in control and there needs to be a talking back, like the time you insert yourself into the world and you almost have a dominance because you need to for survival. You need to for rebellion. You need to for resistance. And then there are times where you need to receive the world, sit back and actually soak it in. You need to let the world be bigger than you. What a gift to let it be bigger than you. And then there are times you think, \u201cNo, I\u2019m going to stand against this, and I will be the hummingbird in the hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those two voices exist within myself, and they very much existed in Lorca\u2019s work, too. When can we be just the human animal, soft and receptive and listening and quiet and let the world happen to us? And then when do we need to say, \u201cNo, I need to be in this world, and I need to be using my voice in order to honor people maybe who don\u2019t have the voice\u201d? Those two things are not just necessary for my own poetics, but I think they\u2019re necessary for my humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your imagery seems so connected to the Spanish surrealists. Some contemporary poets I can think of, Alberto R\u00edos and Sharon Olds, also have that striking and wild imagery within a more narrative structure. I wonder if you would speak to imagery and how you see it, where it\u2019s coming from, what writers influence you in terms of imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think imagery is key to how poems are made. I don\u2019t think they can be made successfully without it, but there\u2019s also a level at which we edit our own imagery, often outside of our poetic life. We don\u2019t generally talk about the way we\u2019re creating metaphors, or seeing things, or describing something, because maybe how we see it is a little strange. Sharon Olds was my teacher at NYU. I never studied with Alberto R\u00edos, but I love his work. \u201cRabbits and Fire\u201d is one of my favorite all time poems. There\u2019s a permission granted with both of those poets to follow the weirdness. I mean, Sharon is really weird. And I also lean into that idiosyncratic self that sees things differently than other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THURMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the collection titles are just breathtaking. Sharks in the Rivers<\/em> represents exploring the unexpected\u2014you don\u2019t expect there to be sharks in a river. And Bright Dead Things<\/em> explores finding the beauty in unconventional places. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your process of selecting a title for each collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love that question. Anyone who works with me always says, \u201cYou love titles.\u201d I love titling poems. Why would I want a poem called poem? I don\u2019t want that. I love Frank O\u2019Hara, I love Alan Dugan, I love people who can get away with it, but for me the title does work. It sums up or contains everything that\u2019s in the book. I will continue to be obsessed with titles. This Big Fake World<\/em> is like a novel in verse\u2014so it\u2019s almost all fiction. And in Lucky Wreck<\/em>, the idea is, \u201cI\u2019m a disaster but I\u2019m also so happy to be here.\u201d Once I found that title, I could put together the rest of the collection\u2014it was dealing with mortality and the recognition of death as well as joy, and those two things are consistently balanced across all five collections. For Sharks in the Rivers<\/em>, there needed to be something scary underneath it all; that was the first time really dealing with where my stepmother\u2019s cancer was going. There was a recognition of the fact that the world started to feel a little more haunted, and I felt less and less comfortable living in the city. There was a pull for me going into that book, like a pulsing dark forest of the mind. I retreated into that as much as I could while living in the city. In Bright Dead<\/em> Things<\/em>, almost all of the poems deal with the idea of containing living and dying in the same breath. Sharks in the Rivers<\/em> is the mortality underneath it, and then Bright Dead Things<\/em> is the idea that we\u2019re both living and dying at the same time. The Carrying<\/em> is similar; it\u2019s what we carry to be in the world. I feel compelled to say that I\u2019ve always liked hard k sounds; the only book that doesn\u2019t have that is Bright Dead Things,<\/em> but it still has this brightness. I love a spondee. I tend to like how these sonics hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are titles something you start with, or are they something you finish a poem or a collection with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It happens both ways, but for the most part they come at the end. Sometimes I think, \u201cWhat\u2019s this poem doing?\u201d If I give it this title, suddenly it all connects, and I realize what the poem is about. Sometimes I ask myself, \u201cWhat is this poem trying to teach me, what is it trying to tell me?\u201d As we write, we don\u2019t always know where the poem is going. If we did, the poems would be terrible for the most part. We have to not have any idea what we\u2019re writing. The title also comes from the question, what is working?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KERSEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier you mentioned how The Carrying<\/em> occasionally focuses on fertility. I also noticed a lot of the expectation for women to have children. I was wondering if this expectation is as common in literary circles as it is in the rest of society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is. I think you\u2019d be surprised if a man wrote about being a father. People would be like, \u201cOh, the sensitivity, the bravery, the courage.\u201d But then if women write about being a mother, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, it\u2019s sentimental.\u201d It\u2019s very strange. It\u2019s very gendered and, like most of all our culture, hetero-maniacal\u2014not just heteronormative, but hetero-maniacal<\/em>. There\u2019s something about white-predominant culture that\u2019s constantly saying, \u201cOkay, once you have a partner. . . .\u201d That was one of the things about Bright Dead Things<\/em> I started with. The line \u201cPeople were nicer to me once I was partnered\u201d has always stuck with me as if I was a problem that had been fixed. Like, \u201cOh, you\u2019re now more human than you were before when you were single.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The literary culture is very much also the predominant culture. The one thing I will say is that you do find more of us who have chosen not to have kids. We\u2019ve leaned into a child-free life. You\u2019d probably find that across the board in creative cultures. We\u2019re making something that fulfills us. There\u2019s also a little bit of a selfishness to being an artist. We\u2019re selfish with our time, and that\u2019s important. There\u2019s an enoughness that we feel. People will say, \u201cOh, I didn\u2019t feel complete until I had a child,\u201d but as artists, there\u2019s a completeness when we create something that non-artists don\u2019t experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Carrying<\/em> there\u2019s this focus on the body, but then going back to Lucky Wreck,<\/em> the focus is on the inner self. Is there a distinction between the body and the self? Or are they codependent or independent of each other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m really glad you pointed that out to me because I don\u2019t think I would have noticed that. The body is essential in The Carrying<\/em> because I was also dealing with vertigo and chronic illness. It also might have had to do with fertility treatments. It felt like my pain levels were almost always sixes, sevens, and eights while I was writing the book. So, the body was not just with me, but it was with me in a painful way. And I was very aware of it all the time. It was hard not to write about it. Whereas when I wrote Lucky Wreck<\/em>, I was younger. I didn\u2019t have the chronic illness. I had scoliosis, but the pain levels were not anywhere near what they were when I was writing The Carrying<\/em>. I love the fact that I was able to not consider the body as much in Lucky Wreck<\/em> because there\u2019s a youthfulness to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We think what we are is our minds or hearts, but if our bodies betray us in any way, if we are having a chronic illness or if we are not able in the way that we were once able, the body becomes a deeper consideration. The body and mind are absolutely connected, but I sometimes wish I could only think about the inner self. I was laughing just the other day at someone asking if I liked teaching on Zoom and I said, \u201cYes.\u201d Partly because it\u2019s freedom. As someone who has had vertigo and had trouble walking and literally trying to get around, I said, \u201cIt\u2019s really nice not to have to worry about falling while getting to a classroom.\u201d There\u2019s a freedom in just entering a space without my body, and my body has become much more of a consideration as I\u2019ve dealt with some severe health issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier you mentioned that This Big Fake World<\/em> was a collection more fictional than personal. Is that something you plan to return to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are times I really like to write fiction, and I particularly like to do it in poems. About a year ago, I wrote a project of twenty poems for the Art for Justice Fund grant that was about what it was like to be in a relationship with an incarcerated person. It was all fictional. A lot of things were pulled from real life and real experiences, my own and others, and they\u2019re all in a different perspective. The poems were gifts; it was really fun to get out of myself for a little while. They were heavy poems, but it also felt like, \u201cHow can I explore this in a real way?\u201d It felt like the only way to do it was to speak from someone who was not the incarcerated person but the person who was left; I kept thinking about how we grieve people when they\u2019re not gone but they\u2019re caged. That felt like a really important project. But now I have these twenty poems that I adore, but I\u2019m not sure if they\u2019ll fit because my sixth manuscript is more like Bright Dead Things<\/em> than The Carrying<\/em>. It\u2019s dealing much more with the self. And I wonder if I should put them in a section or if they\u2019ll be in something else at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d love to hear about the new book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure you guys totally relate to this: I don\u2019t want it to be pandemic poems. I don\u2019t mind if there are some, but I don\u2019t want this to be my pandemic collection. I want it to have a sense of ongoingness and timelessness, though there are poems that deal with the pandemic and that deal with politics in the last four years. But it\u2019s still quite a personal collection. There are a lot of animals in it; it feels like a very alive animal book. It\u2019s slowly coming together, and I\u2019m excited about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of your work is somewhat autobiographical. How much do you find yourself embellishing to fit the poem or the themes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m pretty factual. I stay close to what has happened in my own life, but I\u2019ll always bow down to sound. If something sounds better for the musicality or muscularity of the line, I\u2019ll always choose that sound whether it\u2019s true or not. For the most part, the autobiographical thrust of the poem is true, but specifics will be changed, and almost always because of sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THURMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow to Triumph Like a Girl\u201d is one of my favorite poems in Bright Dead Things.<\/em> It\u2019s a new take on the phrase \u201cfight like a girl.\u201d Could you speak to the importance of writing about the female body and female characteristics in today\u2019s society and what that means to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always say my two favorite F-words are forgiveness and feminism. I feel very drawn to writing feminist work because it\u2019s important to me to recognize what it is to be in a gendered body in a society that privileges one gender. That poem came out of a moment where I was interested in what it was that made me root for those particular horses, what it was to feel a bond to a female animal, and how that felt different than the bond to a male animal. What is it that I\u2019m connected with? I also think that when horses come into my work, they symbolize power. They\u2019re enormous, beautiful beasts. They\u2019re not like the dog or the cat. It wasn\u2019t really about celebrating my own power, but about trying to get power. You write yourself into something you want to believe. I want that huge beating genius machine in my body. What would it be like to have an eight-pound heart?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Carrying<\/em>, there is a reoccurrence of suppression of anger versus accepting anger. How do you showcase that in poems about race or gender or politics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not only about how I balance it in my own writing, but how I balance it in my life. That\u2019s partly the reason those poems have those moments that lift away from anger, because I don\u2019t want to live there. I can live there, but I don\u2019t want to. I know what anger does. I know what it does to my body. Anger can be useful\u2014it has brought me to the page, rage has brought me to the page before, isolation and otherness have brought me to the page. But when I\u2019m stepping away from the poems or when I\u2019m ending the poems, I do need some sort of acceptance or recognition that I won\u2019t let this eat me alive. That to me is also rebellion, like how Audre Lorde talks about self-care as a radical act. I sometimes write so I can say, \u201cYou stay here now, you get to stay on the page, and I get to go walk my dog and have a beautiful day.\u201d I get to have that. I\u2019m not going to live in a place where I\u2019m feeling that fear and anger and torment all the time. It\u2019s a lot about laying it down. I need to put it somewhere. I\u2019ll put it in poems and explore it in poems so that I can also walk away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thinking about \u201cDead Stars,\u201d which embodies what you\u2019re saying. It\u2019s a political poem with that really nice moment where we \u201cbargain for the safety of others.\u201d How do you see politics in your poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, politics are there. You can\u2019t separate them out. You can\u2019t separate who I am out of my poems, and that includes my political beliefs. Who I\u2019m writing for is part of my politics, who I feel seen by is part of my politics. \u201cDead Stars\u201d is a political poem. It\u2019s an eco-political poem. It\u2019s asking, \u201cWhat is it to not only use our bodies to bargain for others but also to speak to the animal and to speak to the trees?\u201d There\u2019s so much giving up, and sometimes I want to give up, too. Sometimes it\u2019s all too much, and it\u2019s all too hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are so many topics, we almost become a circular firing squad with each other because we think, \u201cOh, well if you\u2019re working on women\u2019s rights, are you making sure to include trans rights? Are you making sure to include the intersectionality of race relations? And, if you\u2019re talking about BIPOC, are you making sure that you\u2019re talking about Latinx folks? Are you using the Latinx term or should we say Mexican\u2014because I\u2019m Mexican?\u201d I\u2019m very aware sometimes that it can be overwhelming, and I just want to be like, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to think about it.\u201d And yet, I\u2019m always thinking about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m thinking about my ancestors, I\u2019m thinking about my connection to the earth. My connection to the earth is a political act as is knowing where I come from, writing for ancestors who did not have a chance to write because they were crossing a border and living in a chicken coop and not having a chance to actually be an artist. I think, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to be an artist because my grandfather, who was very much an artist, didn\u2019t have that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also don\u2019t want to write a polemic. I don\u2019t necessarily get a lot from poems that are just telling me what to do. I don\u2019t have the answers. I have a lot of questions, even of myself. I interrogate myself: What can I do more of? When have I done enough service? When do I get to say no? When do I get to say, \u201cI don\u2019t have to be the loudest person in the room right now. Someone else can do that on my behalf.\u201d All of those things are active in my work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also a leaning into beauty that I feel is very important, especially for writers of color. It\u2019s important that we get to have beauty. We all read nature poems, but it\u2019s primarily white men who write nature poems\u2014or the poems that we know, at least. But then you look at Camille Dungy\u2019s amazing anthology Black Nature<\/em>, and you realize that\u2019s actually not the case. It\u2019s an incredible anthology, a game changer. It came out in 2009. It\u2019s great also if you\u2019re teaching. It blows people\u2019s minds because it really is like, \u201cOh wait, I didn\u2019t know how segregated even poems about trees were.\u201d We\u2019ve celebrated those nature poems by white men, but people of color have been writing about nature forever. It\u2019s just that we haven\u2019t read them. We haven\u2019t celebrated them. We haven\u2019t published them. We\u2019re not aware of that legacy. It\u2019s important politically to show that writers of color can write about a groundhog or a butterfly if one needs to do that, if one feels like that\u2019s the pulsing energy within them. We do sometimes have an expectation of and on writers of color that they need to write about their identity\u2014you need to write about your identity in order to be published. I find it a huge disservice to us as writers and as creative people because I didn\u2019t sign up for anything limited. I want an endless opportunity to write about whatever I want to write about. I maintain that I will do that forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we get that pressure from within and outside of our communities to write about certain topics, every part of me is all elbows. Within my community, there are people who are like, \u201cWhy do you say Latinx? Why don\u2019t you say Mexican? Do you ever write about your ancestry? Do you ever write about your identity?\u201d All my work is about my identity, but my identity may not be the identity you want me to write about. Of course, there\u2019s also pressure from outside of my community which is like, \u201cOh, in order for us to sort of fill a quota in this magazine, we would like to have a poem that represents the Mexican-American experience in Lexington.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s me actually. I would prefer to write about a bird. Or I\u2019d write it like a love poem.\u201d That to me is a huge permission I don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re always granted. I\u2019m like, \u201cNo, no, no, no, no. I want to write what I want to write.\u201d Leaning in towards beauty feels like a political act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that there\u2019s this push for diversity in poetry, which has been historically very white and heterosexual, and I totally agree that there are negative side effects. But do you think there are more benefits to pushing diversity in the poetry world? Or do you think it comes with a cost for both the reader and the writer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think one hundred percent pushing for diversity outweighs any of the pitfalls of it, but I just want to point out that there are pitfalls. If I were an editor of a magazine and I wanted to make sure that I had a diverse array of voices, I would also look for diverse range, like formally, but I would want to make sure that I was also asking, \u201cOkay, am I publishing a Black man out of Detroit because he\u2019s writing about guns in Detroit, and that\u2019s my own stereotypical perception?\u201d I feel like some of these editors don\u2019t quite have the self-awareness to recognize that what they\u2019re doing is not just diversifying their pages, but actually doubling down on their own stereotypes about who can write what. If you want to diversify\u2014which we do, and it\u2019s a huge, beautiful thing to push for diversity in the pages, a great, necessary thing\u2014we need to have our poetic community look like America, but at the same time, we need to make sure that we\u2019re also not perpetuating stereotypes about who can write what and allowing for people to write whatever they want. Like Wanda Coleman can write a poem about a bird, but then also can write a poem about identity. The poems should get praised equally, and that\u2019s also the hard part. I love the more political work, the overt work about identity. I\u2019m all on board for it. But I also want to make sure that young poets coming up see that they can do that work, but then they can also lean towards joy, even as a way of self-preservation. Doing that heavy lifting all the time is not always good for us. There are times where we need to protect ourselves and write about our friends and about some things that have actually gotten us through, to write about survival. I want to make sure that young writers of color coming up in that world know that the world is open to them and that they don\u2019t have to fall into one category. They can write whatever they want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KERSEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m curious how writing during this time, during this pandemic, during this political era looks for you and how that differs from normal life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I miss life. This is what keeps coming out of my head: I miss life and there is also life. I really, really miss my family. For the most part, I get to see them often, and I\u2019m very close to my mother and my stepfather and my father and his wife and my brothers. I haven\u2019t been able to travel to see them, and that has been the hardest thing. I\u2019ve also been feeling like, \u201cHow can a poem matter right now?\u201d I really have to convince myself that it can. Some days I\u2019m like, \u201cIt matters!\u201d and I can really feel it, and then sometimes I\u2019m like, \u201cDoes it?\u201d Like, what would be more important? A vaccine. A new president. As artists, we\u2019re always asking, \u201cHow do I write? How do I find my voice? How do I even allow myself to think that this counts for anything? That this matters?\u201d That has increased a hundredfold during the pandemic. How can I even write when so many people are grieving? When we\u2019ve lost so many people? I try to remember that writing is not just a connection to other people, but a connection to myself. During the pandemic, it\u2019s become more of a discipline, like taking my dog for a walk. This is part of what I need to do to survive. It\u2019s very easy to think, \u201cWhat good am I doing? Shouldn\u2019t I be volunteering? Shouldn\u2019t I be doing something different?\u201d But this is part of my survival technique, and I need to continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also very interested in how our bodies carry grief. It\u2019s important right now, and we\u2019re not even talking about it. When I\u2019m teaching, I\u2019m always asking, \u201cHow are you? Are you okay? How\u2019s your mental health? How are you doing?\u201d Students are so used to it now, they\u2019re just like, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m fine. Just moving on.\u201d And yet, I just read a study that our workday has increased by 48 minutes during the pandemic. Suddenly, people aren\u2019t taking breaks. And then we\u2019re asking, \u201cWhy are we so stressed?\u201d Remember when it first started? It was like, \u201cJust take your time, I know we\u2019re going through so much.\u201d And now everything is, \u201cCan I have that ASAP?\u201d It\u2019s completely shifted. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s just a North American thing, but it feels like we\u2019re all distracting ourselves from grief with our work, and we\u2019re also all trying to make money. We need money, but I\u2019m worried that we\u2019re not paying attention, we\u2019re not grieving, we\u2019re not leaving space to recognize what\u2019s happening because it\u2019s too much. We\u2019ve lost our daily life and then we think, \u201cOh, who am I to complain that I can\u2019t go get ice cream with my friends? Or I can\u2019t whatever when someone is dying? How does my grief about what\u2019s gone even matter?\u201d I\u2019m worried we\u2019re not processing. The act of writing poems can help us heal. It can help us process some of the things we\u2019re not saying in our Zoom conversations. It seems like this spring people are\u2014for the lack of a better word\u2014feeling harder. What we\u2019re going to start to miss is our softness, the parts of us that can be vulnerable to the world. We put on masks to leave the house. We put on masks to be with each other. Everything now has doubled down on armor, and it\u2019s hard for sensitive people. It\u2019s hard on artists because we create from a vulnerable, soft place, but the world is requiring a much harder exoskeleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned in your interview with American Literary Review<\/em> a few years ago that writing poems that reach outward and inward at the same time was the project of your life. Do you think this will always be important in your poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think so, yeah. The idea is that I want to connect, but oftentimes, who I\u2019m trying to connect with first is myself. It\u2019s important to connect with the self and if the poem connects with anyone outside of that, that\u2019s a gift. I don\u2019t sit down thinking, \u201cI\u2019m going to write a poem that someone else will like.\u201d I\u2019m trying to write a poem that will help me or that will remind me about my own connection to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KERSEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Bright Dead Things<\/em> was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; you mentioned in a previous interview how you felt the pressure was on after it got so much attention. I was wondering if the popularity of this collection influenced your writing process for The Carrying<\/em>, and how does the increased attention to your work affect your revision process for your poems now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bright Dead Things<\/em> has sold more copies than I could have imagined. I was really having a hard time trying to figure out what to write, how to write, and how to not consider the success of the book. I never considered success as part of poetry. So I thought, \u201cI don\u2019t want to consider it now because it\u2019s never influenced me in any way.\u201d You never sit down being like, \u201cThis poem\u2019s going to make me some money.\u201d It\u2019s just not what we think. With The Carrying<\/em>, I had to write poems for myself that I thought I might never publish. I got through it by not thinking about the audience, whereas normally I consider it. I pushed the audience away so that I could write as authentically as possible. Then, once I started to put the manuscript together, I let the audience in. It was big, surrendering to composing and creating poems without the expectation of even sending them out, maybe not even publishing them at all. I also had to let go of The Carrying<\/em>\u2019s success itself\u2014maybe nothing would happen to it, maybe people wouldn\u2019t like it. I just didn\u2019t know. It\u2019s a very different book than Bright Dead Things<\/em>. They talk a lot to each other, but Bright Dead Things<\/em> gets read a lot in undergraduate poetry workshops and The Carrying<\/em> is a little more mature. It tends to get taught more in graduate school. I was really pleased that The Carrying<\/em> had a nice reception. I was even told by a friend who loved The Carrying<\/em> and thinks The Carrying<\/em> is my best book, \u201cI\u2019m so sorry no one\u2019s going to read this.\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cYour last book was so successful\u2014usually after the success the follow-up isn\u2019t really lauded or read as much.\u201d So I was prepared for it to underperform, and that hasn\u2019t happened, which is nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you feel knowing that there are hundreds of students out there reading your work versus how you feel about family members reading your work or friends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s super hard sometimes. We\u2019re okay with the strangers. We could tell the strangers our deepest secrets. And then you see your aunt reading it. I don\u2019t think I will ever get over that gut-wrenching fear of family members reading a book, or even just a poem. And I\u2019m really lucky because I have a super supportive family who not only reads my work but praises it and comes to readings. When I was nominated for the National Book Award, they all showed up; we had a whole table. But still there are moments of, \u201cAlright, how will they receive it?\u201d I feel a need to do right by them: to write them well, to write them truthfully, but also, to honor them. That kind of obligation doesn\u2019t come into play when you\u2019re thinking about strangers reading your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you turn us on to any poets? Who are you loving right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are so many great books out right now. Victoria Chang\u2019s Obit<\/em> is fantastic. It\u2019s heavy, but the way she starts with truth in every single poem and then ends with sort of a magical realism\u2014something strange happens\u2014it\u2019s really marvelous. Jericho Brown\u2019s The Tradition<\/em> is fantastic and of course it won the Pulitzer Prize so maybe I don\u2019t need to mention it. John Murillo\u2019s Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry<\/em> is really great work. I\u2019m literally looking at my books now. Postcolonial Love Poem<\/em> by Natalie Diaz is phenomenal. Tiana Clark\u2019s I Can\u2019t Talk About the Trees without the Blood<\/em> is a beautiful book. Eduardo C. Corral\u2019s new book Guillotine<\/em> is crushing, but wonderful. Jennifer L. Knox\u2019s Crushing<\/em> It<\/em>\u2014bizarrely surreal and funny and just very weird and wonderful. I\u2019m currently reading and re-reading this book by Alejandra Pizarnik, she\u2019s Argentinian, from Buenos Aires, and it\u2019s phenomenal. It\u2019s a new translation called Extracting the Stone of Madness<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THURMOND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was the poet that made you fall in love with poetry or your first favorite poet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was kind of a combo, but it was one poem in particular that I was like, \u201cWhat is this doing?\u201d Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s \u201cOne Art.\u201d I read it when I was fifteen. I had read poetry before that, but it felt like, \u201cThis is amazing.\u201d Also Sharon Olds, \u201cConnoisseuse of Slugs.\u201d I was like, \u201cWhat\u2019s happening here, this kind of feels dirty.\u201d Lucille Clifton was a huge influence on me, still is a huge influence; her collected is one of my favorite books. Pablo Neruda, even simply the love sonnets. When I was sixteen, I thought, \u201cThese are phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think it\u2019s important for people to explore international writers as much as, or even more than, American writers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I mean we\u2019re in a global conversation and all of these things are connected. I don\u2019t think Merwin would be writing the way that Merwin was writing if he wasn\u2019t translating these Spanish poets, and I don\u2019t think Robert Bly would be writing the way he was writing if he wasn\u2019t translating Lorca. There\u2019s all of these conversations happening. We often get stuck in this idea that the father and mother of poetry are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. I just don\u2019t believe that. There\u2019s more to it. We\u2019re seeing a bigger recognition even with the wonderful Native poetry collections that have just come out, like the Joy Harjo book When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through<\/em>, the brand new Native American Anthology from Norton. It\u2019s fantastic. There are a lot of limitations to the western poetry traditions. When we talk about Neruda, who was before Neruda? Gabriela Mistral. And Mistral was phenomenal, but we don\u2019t know a lot about her. She influenced Neruda, and yet he got all the credit. We kind of stop at the greats\u2014and I love Whitman, I love Dickinson, it\u2019s just that I feel like sometimes it\u2019s a false dichotomy. There\u2019s much more of an international influence. Poetry doesn\u2019t really pay attention to borders. When we talk about great poets, we don\u2019t talk about Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz of Mexico writing in the 1600s. We have limits, and I get that, but it\u2019s a kind of exciting time where we can break some of those limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do you see your own work in that line of Spanish and Latin poets?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s funny because in the last five or six years I\u2019ve done a lot of traveling to South America and it really brought me an understanding of what I was doing, like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve been doing that because of Lorca or the Spanish poets,\u201d or, \u201cI\u2019m interested in duende in a way that I don\u2019t think I was ever taught to talk about.\u201d Even in the sixth book I call on Mistral and Pizarnik and Borges, and it starts to feel like there\u2019s more of an international legacy to the Spanish language poets that I don\u2019t think I had because, honestly, I had to teach myself. I had to do that work myself. I\u2019ve been lucky that I was able to travel to South America and then teach a class on Latin American poetry. Of course, any time you have to teach a class, you have to learn the stuff and explore it. It made me recognize how much Latin American poetry is in my own work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has the role of teaching been on your work and on you as a writer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lim\u00f3n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s interesting because, for the most part, I don\u2019t teach that much; I\u2019m still what I call a \u201crogue poet.\u201d I quit my job in New York City in 2010 and have been primarily working from home as a freelancer\u2014on the road as a poet since then, which is kind of crazy to me. I haven\u2019t had a full-time job, which has been really good for my work, not always for my bank account but sometimes that\u2019s okay, I took a risk. It\u2019s been important to have a sense of freedom as an artist. I\u2019ve been curious as to what it would be like to work full time for a university, and maybe someday, down the line, that\u2019s something that would interest me more. Right now, I really love doing visiting positions. I teach for a low-residency program, so I get to teach for like two weeks. I do these visiting writer things, and I can bring a lot of energy. I can also maybe not get as bogged down by administration and the political work of a creative writing department. In some ways, I still am leaning towards my freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teaching also keeps me reading. I\u2019m reading and I\u2019m re-reading things, and I get excited\u2014\u201cOh right, I really love this Marianne Moore poem.\u201d Or you get to say these marvelous things like, \u201cIt turns out Elizabeth Bishop was amazing.\u201d A lot of times, if we\u2019re not teaching, we may not revisit things. You may not actually think about reading all of Neruda or all of Mistral, but if you\u2019re teaching it you think, \u201cI\u2019m going to do it.\u201d That\u2019s the big gift, revisiting texts. Right now, I\u2019m the Mohr visiting poet at Stanford and I\u2019ve been loving it. Amazing undergraduates. And it feels like a deep conversation. Especially during this pandemic, it felt really nice to have a sense of community, to feel like we\u2019re in this together as poets. But teaching hasn\u2019t been my identity as a writer like it has for a lot of my friends. I like to do it and I enjoy it and I want to keep it that way. I feel like I always want to bring my best self to teaching, and I don\u2019t know if that would be the case if I was doing it all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARTEAGA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you say to the young poet unsure about pursuing their talent in poetry, or writing in general? Because the United States is dominated by Hollywood and the music industry, and then all the other arts are pushed aside as useless. What would you say to that young writer in today\u2019s world unsure of writing on a daily basis, unsure if it\u2019s going to get anywhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LIM\u00d3N<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I would say is that it\u2019s not about making a career, it\u2019s about making a life. When you choose poetry, you\u2019re choosing to pay deeper attention to the world, and you\u2019re choosing really to lean into silence and beauty that could sustain you for the entire length of your years. It\u2019s not about necessarily making an income. I\u2019ve always joked that there\u2019s that saying, \u201cFind what you love and the money will follow.\u201d And poetry, it\u2019s like, \u201cFind what you love and then also get another job that you don\u2019t hate too much.\u201d Poetry, for the most part, won\u2019t make you a lot of money and maybe that\u2019s a beautiful thing. Maybe that\u2019s what keeps it pure. No one\u2019s sitting down like, \u201cI want to write myself a million-dollar poem.\u201d Even Amanda Gorman\u2014she wrote an incredible poem and did an amazing thing, an incredible performance, but she knows that this is a crazy lucky thing that\u2019s happening. She\u2019s very aware, \u201cOkay, this is a moment and I\u2019m going to write it and I\u2019m going love it and enjoy it, but this is a moment.\u201d If you really are interested in being an authentic artist, a lot of what you\u2019re doing is focusing on what it is to create things, and the best joy you will ever have is when you\u2019ve made something that you like, when you\u2019ve created something that you actually recognize is good. The rest of that stuff, publication or recognition, if you keep at it, those things will come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is actually a really wonderful time to be a poet. I would encourage young poets to recognize that we\u2019re at a time where we\u2019re the most diverse\u2014there are books coming out all the time, a plethora of books, from all over the world. Internationally, globally, poetry is having a little shine on it right now. It\u2019s partly because the gatekeepers are different now. They\u2019re like dams that got overflowed. But still, publications come slowly. They come far and few between. The thing you can rely on the most is creation itself. There\u2019s a great quote from Richard Hugo: writing is a way of saying you have a chance in the world. I have a chance and the world has a chance and we have a chance together. That\u2019s survival skills right there. I was listening to a Ten Percent Happier<\/em> podcast. This wonderful Stanford professor, Jenny Odell, was talking about all the things people can do to recommit themselves to the world during the pandemic. She was talking about making time for silence, making time for recognizing the birds out the window, staring at trees. Every exercise, I was like, \u201cPoets do that.\u201d All the skills she was talking about for non-artists are what artists do all the time. You may not make a living out of poetry, but poetry can and will save your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEAVING NATURAL IMAGERY with memories of the past and moments of the present, Ada Lim\u00f3n\u2019s work explores both gender and race while incorporating elements of the surreal. The Los Angeles Review describes her work as being filled with \u201cdiscovery, and rediscovery of self and world.\u201d Lim\u00f3n\u2019s poems guide her reader through her speaker\u2019s self-exploration and encourage them to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":3394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36817,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35981\/revisions\/36817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}