Startlement: New and Selected Poems

"Startlement is a book of rare treasures. With lyrical mastery and intimate storytelling, Limón's poetry reveals new ways of paying attention. This powerful collection is a gift."--Amy Tan

An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America's most celebrated living writers.

Drawing from six previously published books--including widely acclaimed collections The Hurting Kind, The Carrying, and Bright Dead Things--as well as vibrant new work, Startlement exalts the mysterious. With a tender curiosity, Ada Limón wades into potent unknowns--the strangeness of our brief human lives, the ever-changing nature of the universe--and emerges each time with new revelations about our place in the world.

Both a lush overview of her work and a powerful narrative of a poet's life, this curation embodies Limón's capacity for "deep attention," her "power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires" (The New York Times). From the chaos of youthful desire, to the waxing of love and loss, to the precarity of our environment, to the stars and beyond, Limón's poetry bears witness to the arc of all we know with patient lyricism and humble wonder.

"A poet of ecstatic revelation" (Tracy K. Smith), Limón encourages us to meet our shared futures with open and hungry hearts, assuring "What we are becoming, we are / becoming together."

Author: Ada Limón
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 09/30/2025
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.93lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781639550517


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 08/01/2025 pg. 73
Booklist 09/01/2025
Publishers Weekly 09/15/2025

About the Author
Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States. She is the editor of the You Are Here anthology and the author of five collections of poems, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She's also the author of the picture book In Praise of Mystery based on the poem engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper. Limón is a MacArthur Fellow, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a TIME Woman of the Year. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review. She lives in Glen Ellen, California.