Bright Dead Things: Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781571314710)

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bright Dead Things examines the dangerous thrill of living in a world you must leave one day and the search to find something that is "disorderly, and marvelous, and ours."

A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact--tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Ada Lim has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a "huge beating genius machine" striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. "I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying," the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Lim's work is consistently generous, accessible, and "effortlessly lyrical" (New York Times)--though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.

Author: Ada Lim
ISBN-10: 1571314717
ISBN-13: 9781571314710
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Language: English
Published: 09/15/2015
Pages: 128
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.50d
Award: National Book Awards - Finalist
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 06/01/2015 pg. 107
Publishers Weekly 08/17/2015
Publishers Weekly 08/24/2015
New York Times Book Review 12/27/2015 pg. 26
New York Times Book Review 01/03/2016 pg. 2