Tricycle Talks US Poet Laureate Ada Limón on the Practice of Startlement
Sep 24, 2025
Ada Limón, the 24th Poet Laureate of the U.S. and author of 'Startlement: New and Selected Poems,' explores the transformative power of poetry. She discusses 'startlement' as a pathway to spiritual awe and how poetry helps dissolve selfhood, revealing our interconnectedness. Limón shares her journey with loving-kindness meditation and highlights the beauty of human goodness. In readings from her latest collection, she emphasizes curiosity over nostalgia and the importance of language in capturing emotion, inviting listeners into a reflective experience.
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Noticing Dissolves The Self
- Deep, sustained noticing dissolves a fixed sense of self by redirecting attention outward.
- Poetry trains this witnessing, revealing where language succeeds and where it fails.
Living Inside Her Poems
- Ada moved back into her childhood home and found herself "living inside" the poems she wrote about that place.
- That experience taught her about vertical time and the stacked presence of past and present selves.
Startlement As Constant Amazement
- Startlement names a continual capacity for amazement and bewilderment at existence.
- Ada frames a collection of poems as a "startlement"—a collective of surprises that keep returning.
