The Hurting Kind An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. “I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings—and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”? "Following the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning The Carrying, U.S. Poet Laureate Limón’s latest is divided into four sections by season. But though she closely and caringly observes the flora and fauna around her, Limón is not offering a naturefest. Instead, she shows how we are enfolded in the world, how we move through not just the seasons but the years. “It’s like staring into an original joy,” she proclaims on a mountaintop, and she wants to tap into that joy while bringing us along with her. The “Spring” poems celebrate not just coming to life but overcoming, while the “Summer” poems reflect desire: “I do not want to kill the longing woman in me,” she declares, and ends one poem about trees seeming to kiss, “Come/ home. Everything is begging you.” “Fall” is not just a time for “sad privacy” but for reimagining; “What good is accuracy in the perpetual/ scattering that unspools the world.” And that leads easily into the sweet nostalgia of “Winter” and preparations for the next round: “the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.” The title poem queries our ties to past, family, and identity but concludes encouragingly: “Love ends. But what if it doesn’t.”VERDICT An accomplished volume highly recommended for both neophytes and poetry lovers." - Library Review