The Carrying
Before Limon became U.S. Poet Laureate (2022-24), The Carrying established her as the most physically grounded and emotionally honest poet of her generation. Her poems about infertility, Kentucky horses, grief, and the body's limits are simultaneously accessible and profound. "Dead Stars" became one of the most widely circulated contemporary American poems. Her Laureate anthology (You Are Here) continued her mission: bringing poetry to people who don't think they like it.
A steady complaint targets how Limón closes her poems: one reader dislikes the pattern of tidy, aphoristic final lines, saying they “seem more profound than they really are” and wishing the last few lines were cut throughout, calling them “such tidy little wrapped up endings.” A reader who found the opening strong reports the middle of the book growing repetitive, poems that “got repetitive and long” and start to blur together. Someone without Limón's specific material, infertility, chronic vertigo, says most of it was “surprisingly not really my thing,” with only 'The Raincoat' sticking. The heavily autobiographical grounding, Kentucky, horse racing, gardening, reads to some as narrow rather than universal, and the tone runs consistently somber across the book.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
