Join the Morristown Centennial Library in celebrating National Poetry Month this April by reading "The Hurting Kind" by Ada Limón, current Poet Laureate of the United States. This collection of poems, Limón's sixth and most recent book, is a beautiful collection that readers will find moving, relatable, and, at times, humorous. Copies of the book are available now at the library. Reserve one through email (info@centenniallibrary.org), phone (888-3853), or just stop by and pick up a copy.

We will be hosting a discussion of the book on Tuesday, April 11 at 1:00, upstairs at the library. Here at MCL, our book discussions are casual and fun, and never feel like homework :) Join us for an hour of tea and poetry appreciation to celebrate the ways that poetry can add to our lives!

From the review of "The Hurting Kind":

"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"?

With Limón's remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions—incorporating others' stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming with horses and kingfishers and the gleaming eyes of fish. And they honor parents, stepparents, and grandparents: the sacrifices made, the separate lives lived, the tendernesses extended to a hurting child; the abundance, in retrospect, of having two families.

Along the way, we glimpse loss. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories and the mysterious behavior of pets left behind. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world. "Slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still / green in the morning's shade," writes Limón of a groundhog in her garden, "she is doing what she can to survive."

May 9, 2024, 6:30 to 8 PM

May 9, 2024, 6:30 to 8 PM

May 14, 2024, 9 AM to 6 PM