Let Yourself Rage With Poet Laureate Ada Limón

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón has had a far-reaching impact. She has visited readers and writers across the country, installed poems at majestic sites in national parks, and she even wrote a poem that’s engraved inside a NASA spacecraft on its way to Jupiter. Today on the show, though, our host Anna Martin talks with Limón about something more personal and intimate: What happens when writers fall hopelessly in love. She reads a Modern Love essay about a novelist whose debilitating crush on a poet gives her a bad case of writer’s block (before leaving her with a badly broken heart). Limón also tells Anna why feeling anger and grief when we’re despairing can be the path to feeling more alive, and she explains why a pair of old sweatpants belong in a love poem as much as bees and flowers do. Ada Limón’s recent book, “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World” can be found here. Lily King’s Modern Love essay, “An Empty Heart Is One That Can Be Filled” can be found here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Anna. Before we start the show today, I want to share a fun update with you.
0:05.8	We decided to offer a little something extra for New York Times subscribers who are also fans of the Modern Love column.
0:12.7	Starting very soon, in addition to our regular episodes of the show, which will keep publishing every Wednesday.
0:19.2	New York Times subscribers will also get the latest modern love
0:22.4	essay read aloud in our podcast feed every Friday. This is something you've been reaching out
0:28.3	and asking us for and we've been listening to you. So this is our way of saying, thanks for listening
0:33.4	to us. Okay, on with the show. Love now and love.
0:38.6	I love.
0:39.3	Love was stronger than anything.
0:42.2	I feel of love.
0:43.3	And I love you more than anything.
0:46.3	What is love?
0:47.3	Love.
0:48.3	Love.
0:49.3	Love.
0:59.7	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love.
1:05.8	As you probably know, our show is inspired by the Modern Love column, where it's all about the personal essay. But today, we're talking about how poetry can also help us express our messiest feelings.
1:14.2	My guest today is America's official poet, our poet laureate, Ada Limon. During her time
1:20.9	in the job, which comes to an end this month, Limon has shown us poems aren't just words we read
1:26.3	in a quiet room somewhere.
1:28.5	One of her big projects was having poems installed on picnic tables in several national parks.
1:34.2	So this summer, you could be eating a sandwich on the shores of Cape Cod enjoying a poem by Mary Oliver.
	...

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