The Carrying

National Book Award finalist Limón (Bright Dead Things) here weaves nature, family, and grief into a stunning collection. Several poems recount the loss of the speaker's first husband from a drug overdose, but although pains are often described—whether caused by grief, infertility, or a crooked spine—Limón's poems sing with the joy of life: "I wish to be untethered and tethered all at once, my skin/ singes the sheets and there's a tremor in the marrow." The poet mourns not only for people lost but also for irreplaceable things such as languages: "In the time it takes to say I love you, or move in with someone,/ …all the intricate words/ of a language become extinct." Many poems begin or turn on the unexpected, as in "The Vulture & the Body": "What if, instead of carrying// a child, I am supposed to carry grief?" Occasionally, there are too many unessential details, and although most of Limón's similes are strikingly good, she sometimes settles for the easy: "I saw seven cardinals brash and bold/ as sin in a leafless tree." Nevertheless, in accessible language, Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday