'Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. The Carrying is a gift' Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate'Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet's perspective into themes of loss, chronic pain, fear of the 21st century's ongoing devastations, concern for the natural world. It's a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart' Tracy K. Smith, Guardian'In her dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying, Ada Limon offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How should we treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer, like humans' Jami Attenberg