18 pages • 36 minutes read
Mowing
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“I Remember the Carrots” by Ada Limón (2015)
In “I Remember the Carrots” Limón explores the difference between being human and being a natural element. She relays the story of how, as a child, she was impatient and pulled up all of the carrots in the garden before they were fully formed. She was jealous of the field and it’s “contentment.” Now, as an adult she remembers her “bright dead things” and meditates on how hard it is to be human, always wanting something else, and even being destructive in the way humans achieve their needs. The title of her book, Bright Dead Things, comes from the way she describes the carrots in this poem.
“The Wild Divine” by Ada Limón (2015)
“The Wild Divine” gives readers insight into Limón’s spiritual beliefs around nature. In this poem she describes an encounter with a horse, in which the speaker feels that “this is what it was to be blessed – / to know a love beyond owning” [Lines 27 – 28]. It mirrors some of the beliefs of the speaker in “mowing,” including the desire to be a part of nature and to find joy in anonymity, in “disappearing” from the world and watching it invisibly, rather than taking possession of wild things.
“What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use” by Ada Limón (2011)
In this poem Limón makes plain her religious beliefs as they connect with nature. The speaker of this poem is with a friend who asks if she believes in God, and the speaker of the poem says she believes in the connections between people and each other and nature, and her friend says it is essentially the same thing, but the speaker refuses to fully agree. Many of Limón’s poems, including “Mowing” express that connection between people and nature, sometimes with a sense that the connection itself is divine.
Further Literary Resources
“Charring the Page: On Ada Limón’s ‘Bright Dead Things’” by Nick Ripatrazone (2015)
This review of Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things helps readers understand the context of the poem “Mowing” which appears in this collection. Author Nick Ripatrazone gives readers insight into the meaning of the epigraph of the book by Larry Levis and explains how Levis’ work connects to Limón’s. It also explains the importance of the poems, “What it Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use” and “Wild Divine” in connection to Limón’s other poems.
“Ada Limón: An Interview with the National Book Award Finalist” by Sarah Green (2015)
In this interview Sarah Green asks Ada Limón about her book Bright Dead Things. Limón discusses her creative process, giving insight into her poems, consciously and unconsciously. She notes that her favorite “F-words” are “feminism and forgiveness” and that she thinks people can relate to one another through failure as well as success. She also notes that she does not necessarily believe in God, but she does “believe in animals” and describes the feeling of watching a horse in a field, how she is both in awe and slightly afraid of their power. Writing poetry is her way of getting to a place of surrender, something she hints at in “Mowing” and other poems of the book.
In this combination of an interview and a reading, Ada Limón discusses her work and elements of her life story with Ron Charles, a book critic at The Washington Post. She discusses the way autobiography informs her poems and how elements of her life inspired the poems of Bright Dead Things. In addition to reading poems about her connection with nature, Limón also reads poems on themes of feminism, mortality and tokenism in the poetry community. This interview provides a broad introduction to Limón’s work and some of her most important themes.
Listen to Poem
The host of AM Poetry reads “Mowing” aloud. AM Poetry can be found on iTunes. The podcast provides archives of many worthwhile poems for audio consumption.
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By Ada Limón
