As U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón read her poems aloud at Claremont McKenna College’s Athenaeum recently, she transported the audience as they nodded along as if to encourage Limón to keep reading all night.
The room, which was full to capacity, reflected Limón’s own personal warmth, and she paused between poems to quietly check in with the audience, asking, “Are you doing okay?”
In all, Limón read a dozen poems, including, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” which will be engraved in her own handwriting on NASA spacecraft, the Europa Clipper, and launches to the second moon of Jupiter in October 2024. (On March 1, Limón read the poem at the investiture ceremony for Harvey Mudd College’s sixth president, Harriet Nembhard ’91, who was also present at the Ath for the poetry reading.)
Named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States in 2022 by the Librarian of Congress, Limón is the first Latina to serve as the nation’s official poet. In addition, Limón, who has authored six books of poetry, has been honored with both a Guggenheim and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, while her work has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and been nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In early 2024, TIME magazine included her among their 12 “Women of the Year.”
The evening was co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.
Speaker quotes
“I would like to express my gratitude … to everyone who is willing to risk a little vulnerability to be in a room where poems are being read, because sometimes we have to open our hearts in ways that we are not always ready for,” Limón said before reading her poetry.
“I think all poems on some level are singing back to the world. And I think their way of …resurrecting others, and… resurrecting the self — when I am feeling my most lost or most tender, or suffering the most, poetry often is a way to bring me back to a type of living again, recommitting to being alive, and I hope we can all do that,” she said.
Student question
Jasper Datta ’26, a first-year student at CMC, asked Limón to share her vision of “the future of poetry in an age of endless online content and declining readership in poetry.”
“I think the future of poetry is that we are at a very unique space right now. One that is more wide-ranging and representative of the many different voices in America. It is also beginning to become more of a global literary community,” she said.
“A lot of people I know, read poems every day, but they are not buying a book every day. And I have traveled this country extensively…and everywhere I go, no matter what community you are in, no matter what state you are in, people are reading and writing poetry. I thought my job (as Poet Laureate) would be to get up and convince people that (poetry matters)…. Instead, it has been to listen to people tell me about their experiences, deep experiences, with reading and writing poetry. So, I think it is alive and well, I think it is flourishing. And, for me, it actually gives me a great deal of hope.”
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