I think my biggest fear is not living up to this life I’ve been given. I’m all right with missing things (I can be a bit of a recluse), but I want to be grateful for what I have and show gratitude to those around me. This might sound simple, but I want to be a good person and I want to live to the fullest while I’m here. I’m scared to not appreciate this moment and the people around me. I keep moving forward because someday we won’t be here and I don’t want miss anything. I keep moving forward despite the sharks, the bears, the violence, the accidents, the wind, the sinkholes, the crocodiles, the rattlesnakes, the silence, the rage, the big empty, all of that. Oh, and yes, I’m scared of so many things, aren’t you? I am reminded of that wonderful quote from Georgia O’Keefe: “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life-and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” That basically defines my life.

I wanted to write the poems I needed to write. Additionally, I loved the idea that the poems in the book could be seen as bright dead things themselves-things that are the remnants of the original burst. The struggle between what destroys us and what keeps us going is something very real to me and real to my work. I wanted the title to point to both the living and the dying we’re all doing. Nicole Sealey: How’d you come to name the collection Bright Dead Things?Īda Limón: I struggled with the title at first, but when I landed on that phrase, in the poem “I Remember the Carrots,” I knew it was what I wanted. What follows are selections from that latter interview: For further reading, check out these two interviews Ada gave with The Rumpus Poetry Book Club and with Nicole Sealey of National Book Foundation. If you’ve not yet read it, I highly recommend it looks like today the Kindle version is on sale for $6.91 in the States. Copyright © 2015 by Ada Limón.īright Dead Things is one of my favorite poetry collections. “I Remember the Carrots” by Ada Limón, from Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015). I still want to kill the carrots because I can. This surrender? What I mean is: there are days Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong.

Who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop. I broke the new rootsĪnd carried them, like a prize, to my father Their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.Īnd so I ripped them all out. When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots, The advance of fulfillment, and of desire – In Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be –

I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life,Ī really good one even, sitting in the kitchen

Bright dead things limon