Poet Ada Limón’s Instructions on Not Giving Up
Latino USA
My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ada Limón ended her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate this year – the first Latina to do so. Her work has been described as both tender and resounding, it rejoices in the simplicity of everyday life. She’s been praised for tackling head-on the imperfections of her body and the failings of our governments. But even in the darkness, her poetry does not linger in despair – it always finds a way back to the beauty in nature.
Her new poetry collection is called “Startlement.”
Limón spoke to us about the art of noticing nature, dealing with grief through poetry, and how to feel brave during hard times.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. |
| 0:10.5 | Yo, yo, yo, can we get a Thanksgiving first? |
| 0:13.5 | I'm hungry. |
| 0:14.2 | What's up, y'all? |
| 0:14.9 | It's Kadeen. |
| 0:15.6 | And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Ever After podcast. |
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| 0:21.8 | On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family, love and marriage, |
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| 0:37.6 | Dear Latino USA listener, before we start, you should know that if you want to listen to this episode, |
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| 0:50.6 | Joining also gets you behind the scenes access, and yes, some chis may. |
| 0:56.4 | So click the link in the episode description and after you do that, then click play. |
| 1:02.4 | Let's go to the show. |
| 1:15.0 | Ada Limon is a poet, |
| 1:20.7 | a poet. This spring, she ended her tenure as the 24th Poet of the United States, and Ada is the very first Latina to ever hold that position. |
| 1:28.4 | Ada, is it okay if I ask you to read some poems as we're going? |
| 1:32.4 | Of course. Yeah. |
| 1:35.9 | Little day. |
| 1:38.2 | This is what it comes down to. |
... |
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