MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When Ada Limon became the U.S. poet laureate back in 2022, she took that moment to reflect on poetry's power to connect or to reconnect people to the world around them, to love and to grief and healing. Her signature project has placed poetry in national parks around the country. The idea was to praise both what she calls our sacred and natural wonders and also to speak to, quote, "the complex truths of this urgent time."
Well, Limon's tenure has drawn to a close, so we have invited her back to talk about what this time has meant to her and to share some poetry. Ada Limon, welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Happy last couple of days of National Poetry Month.
ADA LIMON: Thank you so much for having me.
KELLY: So you crisscrossed the country as poet laureate. I don't usually think of poet as a road warrior job, where you have to get up and get on planes. But tell me what you've seen, what people have told you about how poetry fits into their lives right now.
LIMON: Yeah. One of the misconceptions I had when I first took on the role was this idea that I was supposed to somehow bring poetry to the people when in reality, it was much more common for me to sit and receive the stories of people having an intimate connection with poetry already or having poetry readings in libraries or in schools and people really fostering the connection with poetry on a very human, intimate level.
KELLY: This is poems that they had written they wanted to share with you?
LIMON: Yeah, sometimes they were poems that they had written, and sometimes they were poems that they had memorized and loved and put, you know, on the walls of hospitals. There's one place I went where there were poetry installations on the back of bathroom - the walls of bathroom stalls.
KELLY: Does the poetry have to be good? I'm thinking - I mean, you're a beautiful poet. You're a professional poet. You're our poet laureate. I'm sure some of the scraps of paper that people are showing you that they carry around are not quite at that level. Does it have to be good to have that kind of power?
LIMON: You know, I think that poetry has the ability to heal the writer and to change the writer. And there's a lot of power in that. And so I might read something that I might not remember (laughter), right?
KELLY: (Laughter) Right.
LIMON: That I feel like, oh, yes...
KELLY: You hoped not to remember (laughter).
LIMON: ...I glanced at it - yeah.
KELLY: Right?
LIMON: And it's gone. But at the same time, to that person, they've transformed an experience into a piece of art.
KELLY: So I mentioned your signature project. It is called, You Are Here. Part of this was actually doing something very small and specific. Like, you actually put poems on picnic tables. Tell me what it looked like.
LIMON: Oh, yeah, thank you so much for bringing it up. I worked with the Poetry Society of America to choose poems that would fit for each of the seven parks that we had the beautiful opportunity to work with. And those poems are on those picnic tables. So you sit at the picnic table, you read the poem, and then you're in this really wondrous, beautiful area. And then each of the tables also includes a prompt that just says, what would you write to the landscape around you? - so that it's not just the experience of reading the poem and gathering around the poem and gathering in a beautiful area, but also thinking about how you might write something back to the world. And I wanted to do that so that we could remember that the relationship with our landscapes is reciprocal.
KELLY: So you did this at parks, at picnic tables all over the country, I mentioned, from Cape Cod to the Everglades in Florida to the Redwood parks in California.
LIMON: Yeah.
KELLY: And I wonder if you would read one of those poems for me. I know that you left one called "Never Alone" on a picnic table in the Redwoods?
LIMON: Yes - by a beautiful poet named Francisco X. Alarcon, who wrote in English and Spanish and Nahuatl. And this poem really meant the world to me, and I thought how beautiful to be able to put his words in the Redwoods National and State Parks.
(Reading) Never alone. Always this caressing wind, this earth whispering to our feet, this boundless desire of being, grass, tree, corazon.
KELLY: Beautiful. Why that poem for that place?
LIMON: Have you been to the Redwoods?
KELLY: No, never. Now I want to go (laughter).
LIMON: OK...
KELLY: I want to...
LIMON: ...Let's meet there.
KELLY: ...Find your table.
LIMON: Let's meet there. There's something about being in those trees that makes you feel so small, but small in that pleasurable, good way of knowing that there is something bigger than you. It really feels like, oh, I am part of something. And I wanted this poem to be there so that anyone who was in that space could recognize that feeling. And, you know, I feel like it comes naturally if you're there. But there are also times where we are in nature - and I don't know if you ever feel this way - but you're going on a walk or you're thinking, OK, this is my time where I'm going to take a moment for myself.
KELLY: Totally.
LIMON: And instead, all you do is make lists of things to do...
KELLY: (Laughter) Yes, also...
LIMON: ...Or who you need to call.
KELLY: ...Totally.
LIMON: Yes, or think about, you know, the state of the world or, you know, the ways in which you have failed. And my hope is that you read this poem and you remember where you are, that you stop for a moment and remember where you are on this spinning Earth that we must protect.
KELLY: I want to ask about creating poetry in this moment. We are living in a moment where President Trump has taken on some of the great cultural pillars of our country. He has installed himself as chairman of The Kennedy Center. He has issued executive orders to force changes at the Smithsonian. How are you thinking about creating art, creating something of beauty in this moment?
LIMON: You know, I was just speaking to a former poet laureate, and I was thinking about how, in the role, a lot of what you do is talk about poetry and the importance of poetry. And then there's a moment where you think - you know, you're in your kitchen, you're listening to the news, and you think, does it matter? Does it really matter?
KELLY: Yeah, like, is this so beside the point?
LIMON: To write a poem, right?
KELLY: Yeah.
LIMON: When what we need is so huge, monumental, the collective action that is required. And then you think, there is such a proliferation of meanness. And what we're seeing right now is power and domination and meanness rewarded. And then you think, what if poetry can bring you back to wonder, to kindness, to care, to sensitivity, to tenderness? And even in that small moment, isn't that a radical act?
KELLY: Ada Limon - she's just wrapped up her tenure as 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Ada Limon, thank you.
LIMON: Thank you.
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