The Carrying

The Carrying is a poetry collection by Ada Limón. It was first published in 2018 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in the same year. The poetry in the collection covers multiple topics, but many poems concern infertility, pregnancy, and sorrow. Critics believe that it’s Limón’s most intimate and autobiographical work. Limón is a bestselling poet who works as a freelance writer and creative writing instructor. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University, and she once judged the National Book Award in Poetry.

The Carrying opens with a poem called “A Name.” “A Name” is a short poem that centers around the biblical Eve. Eve wants to connect to the animals in the garden because she feels alone and misunderstood. The poem is an attempt to engage the reader in a conversation because, just like Eve, Limón feels misunderstood, displaced, and silenced. The Carrying is Limón’s opportunity to reclaim her connection to society.

The poems in The Carrying cover three broad themes – a woman’s relationship with her own body, society’s attitude towards infertile women, and what it means to survive loss. These themes are interconnected. Limón is infertile and she lives with chronic pain. She has a difficult relationship with her body because she feels like she can’t fulfill her natural purpose. She grieves for the children she’s lost, and the children she will never have.



Limón dedicates numerous poems to her body. For her, the body is contradictory. It is strong but fragile at the same time. Her body is especially delicate because of her long-term health conditions. On one hand, Limón feels powerful because she gets up every day and thrives, but on the other hand, she feels tethered and restricted by her spinal problems.

Limón explores these feelings in detail in the poem called “Wonder Woman.” In “Wonder Woman,” Limón talks about how she suffers through chronic pain in silence. She puts on a brave face for the outside world, but inside, she’s struggling. She ties this experience to the struggles faced by women everywhere, who wear smiles even if they’re suffering emotionally, or physically. Making her experiences universal goes back to Limón’s desire to start a conversation with her readers.

Many poems in the collection concern Limón’s pursuit of motherhood. In “The Vulture and the Body,” for example, Limón explores how infertility makes her question her own worth. She knows that there are other women out there who feel the same way. A woman, Limón argues, isn’t allowed to feel whole unless she’s carrying something. Rather than carrying a child inside of her, she carries the shadows of the children she can’t conceive.



Although women carry life, everything eventually dies. We are all connected to the natural world because once we’re born, we return to the earth. From this earth, there’s new life. Limón muses on this endless cycle in “Ancestors.” She considers how our ancestors are all around us, in the fabric of the rocks and the trees, and that this connection keeps us tethered to nature. Limón takes this analogy so far as to suggest that, without our connection to nature, we no longer exist.

While everything changes around us, we can still find permanence, and security, in nature. For example, in “Of Roots & Roamers,” Limón contrasts the immovable nature of trees with the fleeting lifespans of the flowers, weeds, and grass all around them. We are also like flowers, because our lifespans are so short, but the trees offer us shelter and the illusion of longevity. Trees in The Carrying become like Mother Nature, or maternal figures of comfort and love.

In some poems, Limón considers what her life would be like if she had a child. She isn’t sure whether her life would be better, worse, or just different. For example, in “Sparrow, What Did You Say?” considers how everyday experiences, such as gardening, would be different with a child by her side. Rather than focusing on birdsong and nature, she would teach her child to plant vegetables.



Limón concludes that, in such a case, no experience is better than the other—they’re simply different. She realizes that she’s good at being alone and she doesn’t need a child to complete her. She can plant things in her garden, watch them grow, and nurture them, which is just as noble as watching a child grow up and thrive under her care. Limón offers hope to childless women through her poetry.

Most importantly, Limón wants to help women find peace with their infertility. She uses her own acceptance as an example. In the poem, “Maybe I’ll Be Another Kind of Mother,” Limón looks at how she’s redirected her maternal instincts elsewhere. She looks after the natural world, she takes care of her dog, and she finds joy in watching everything thrive. Although this joy is not the same as motherhood, Limón laments, it’s possible for women to find happiness without children.