Identity & Belonging

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Protest, Part 2: U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón on Bearing Witness

Dear Seized Readers,

We are in a moment of extreme change in our nation. Citizens have a multitude of serious concerns. Many are being ill-treated by our present administration, and our national leaders’ respect for other nations is little to nil.

How do we navigate this chaotic, dark time? Poetry offers universal truths, elevates the shared human experience, and helps us find our voices, voices we can use in ordinary conversations, our writing, and actions designed to help ourselves and others. Ada Limón, our 24^th U.S. poet laureate and the first Latina to hold this position, talked about being a feminist in her 9/10/18 interview with Ms. Magazine writer Carmen Rios. Here is her answer to Rios’ question “How do you think we survive this current political moment?” during the first Trump presidency, another time when division and strife were the order of the day:

I think we all survive in many different ways. Each day calls for another kind of resistance or surrender … For me, some days I try to focus on the microcosm when the world’s pain is too much to take in … Other days, it requires rage and a fighting back and rallying of support …

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The main thing for me is to know that I am not alone. So many women are going through so much all the time …

We have to look out for each other. We have to allow ourselves to be tender toward one another. It’s isolation and the sense that we don’t belong anywhere that can destroy us.

Limón’s last sentence bears repeating at this time, “It’s isolation and the sense that we don’t belong anywhere that can destroy us.” This sentiment is why poets rally us with protest verse, to remind us of our shared humanity, that we and everyone else belongs in this world and in community with each other.

More recently, in early 2023, when Limón spoke at Yale about the writing life, she emphasized how art is not created “in solitude,” that it is an invitation to the reader, listener, or viewer to participate. For me, as a poet, Ada Limón’s view of each of us as being part of a larger community is heartening and an attitude that should be embraced in this moment.

As you read “A New National Anthem,” look and listen for a turn towards a dark revelation early in her poem as well as an inspiring turn/new thought at the end.

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A New National Anthem
 
The truth is, 
I’ve never cared 
for the National/
Anthem. If you think 
about it, 
it’s not a good/
song. Too high 
for most of us 
with “the rockets/
red glare” and then there 
are the bombs./
(Always, always, 
there is war and bombs.)/
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw/
even the tenacious 
high school band off key./
But the song didn’t mean 
anything, just a call/
to the field, something 
to get through before/
the pummeling of youth. 
And what of the stanzas/
we never sing, 
the third that mentions 
“no refuge/
could save the hireling 
and the slave”? 
Perhaps,/
the truth is, 
every song of this country/
has an unsung 
third stanza, 
something brutal/
snaking underneath us 
as we blindly sing/
the high notes 
with a beer sloshing 
in the stands/
hoping our team wins. 
Don’t get me wrong, 
I do/ like the flag, 
how it undulates 
in the wind/
like water, elemental, 
and best 
when it’s humbled,/
brought to its knees, 
clung to by someone who/
has lost everything, when 
it’s not a weapon,/
when it flickers, when it 
folds up so perfectly/
you can keep it 
until it’s needed, 
until you can/
love it again, 
until the song 
in your mouth feels/
like sustenance, a song 
where the notes are sung/
by even the ageless woods, 
the short-grass plains,/
the Red River Gorge, 
the fistful of land left/
unpoisoned, that song 
that’s our birthright,/
that’s sung in silence when 
it’s too hard to go on,/
that sounds like someone’s 
rough fingers weaving/
into another’s, that sounds 
like a match being lit/
in an endless cave, 
the song that says 
my bones/
are your bones, 
and your bones are my bones,/
and isn’t that enough?

- Ada Limón  
from the Poetry Foundation website

Copyright Credit: Ada Limón, "A New National Anthem" from The Carrying.  Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón.  Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions.

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What are your thoughts about Limón’s “A New National Anthem?” Did you notice the turns in her poem?

Today’s Extra Poem

I end today’s post with another poem by Ada Limón which asks, among other things, how do we limit each other? How do we place our own spin on the identities of others? This kind of untrue reduction dehumanizes. In light of the recent name-calling, untruths, and negative categorizing–this behavior which continues to happen in our nation—“The Contract Says …” is perfect as a consciousness raising piece.

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The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to be Bilingual

When you come, 
bring your brown-/
ness so we can be sure 
to please/
 
the funders. 
Will you check this/
box; we’re applying 
for a grant./
 
Do you have any poems 
that speak/
to troubled teens? 
Bilingual is best./
 
Would you like 
to come to dinner/
with the patrons 
and sip Patrón?/
 
Will you tell us the stories 
that make/
us uncomfortable, 
but not complicit?/
 
Don’t read the one 
where you/
are just like us. Born to 
a green house,/
 
garden, don’t tell us 
how you picked/
tomatoes and ate them 
in the dirt/
 
watching vultures 
pick apart another/
bird’s bones in the road. 
Tell us the one/
 
about your father 
stealing hubcaps/
after a colleague said 
that’s what his/
 
kind did. Tell us 
how he came/
to the meeting 
wearing a poncho/
 
and tried to sell the man 
his hubcaps/
back. Don’t mention 
your father/
 
was a teacher, 
spoke English, loved/
making beer, loved 
baseball, tell us/
 
again about the poncho, 
the hubcaps,/
how he stole them, 
how he did the thing/
 
he was trying to prove 
he didn’t do.

- Ada Limón    
from the Poetry Foundation website

Copyright Credit: Ada Limón, "The Contract Says: We’d Like The Conversation To Be Bilingual" from The Carrying.  Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón.  Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions.

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Straight to the Heart

The best verse strikes us where we live, makes issues real through an inimitable voice and images that convey a unique but shared human experience. We feel the moment; we are there. “A New National Anthem” and “The Contract Says …” do this. Though these poems are not specifically about our current moment in America, the persistent problems of racism and tokenization of ethnic minorities are playing out now with the negative singling out of immigrants and trans people. These kinds of issues are brought to the fore in the powerful imagery of these poems by our national poet laureate.

Share your reactions to Ada Limón’s poems.

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