Sharks in the Rivers

Published in 2010, Ada Limon's debut collection Sharks in the Rivers announced the arrival of a beloved poet - now the 24th US Poet Laureate, National Book Award winner, Time Magazine woman of the year 2024. An extraordinary collection - at once urbane and earthy - Sharks in the Rivers navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature. The speaker in this extraordinary collection finds herself multiply dislocated: from her childhood in California, from her family's roots in Mexico, from a dying parent, from her prior self. The world is always in motion and it is also full of risk.In such a world, how should one proceed? Throughout Sharks in the Rivers, Limón suggests that we must cleave to the world as it 'keep[s] opening before us,' for, if we pay attention, we can be one with its complex, ephemeral, and beautiful strangeness. Loss is perpetual, and each person's mouth 'is the same / mouth as everyone's, all trying to say the same thing.' For Limón, it's the saying - individual and collective - that transforms each of us into 'a wound overcome by wonder,' that allows 'the wind itself' to be our 'own wild whisper'.