Ada Limon's SHARKS IN THE RIVERS is delicious and delicate. The first poem I read was the first poem in the book. So, that's good, right, because it sucks you in. That's what first poems of books are supposed to do. Suck you up. The poem is called "Sharks in the River." It's moody, ambient. Reminds me a bit of Bill Evans playing the guitar. I like things that so I when I read "Sharks in the River," I felt good. That's what I expect from poems although I should not expect anything from anything or anyone. Still, the poem fell right into my poetry head and made it gyrate and groove.
Limon writes:
All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.
C'mon. That's just some beautiful language. So, I'm comin' from that place, where the beauty of the language is tickling my imagination out of itself and the poem does what all wonderful poems do, make me want to write. You know, inspire. This book inspired me because after reading "Sharks in the River," I flipped to this poem, "The Russian River." Any time a poet gets a 1973 Ford LTD in a poem, something is happening that is dynamite and grounded, set there in "place," in landscape and road and goddamn it, America. Ada Limon is some kind of American. She writes love poems that take place in motion, in reverb and speed. American poems with the word "Russian" in it.
Here's the poem:
THE RUSSIAN RIVER
In the 1973 Ford LTD, we took Highway 12
and headed toward the wide Russian River.
It was the summer of our final year of high school;
we were all so stoned that the world was perfectly defined
by goodness and realness and the opposite of those.
It was 98 degrees and even with the windows open
it was hard to breathe. Outside of Guerneville
we found the party--beautiful bodies jumping off
the cliffs into the deepest part, a raft of natural
naked woman floating like an old cigarette ad
down the current. I was going to marry you.
Hours into the afternoon we swam to each other
and walked upriver. I remember thinking this
was what life was, and what I had always wanted:
being pressed on a warm, flat rock, out wet imprint
there as if it would matter, I am holding on. I am holding on.
Hold up. Buy this book. It's this good all the way through. There is other stuff to say but I'm not going to say it. Ada Limon's poetry is a tasty treat and if nothing else, you should serve it up to yourself and your friends and mothers and lovers and students no matter what hour of the day, no matter what the silly circumstance.
To purchase SHARKS IN THE RIVER.
