The Hurting Kind - Poems

Now in paperback! With over 60,000 hardcover copies in print, the astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselvesfrom U.S. Poet Laureate and MacArthur Fellow 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"?
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.

List of contents

 

1. Spring

 

Give Me This

Invasive

Swear On It

Drowning Creek

Sanctuary

A Good Story

In the Shadow

Forsythia

And Too, the Fox

Stranger Things in the Thicket

Glimpse

The First Lesson

Anticipation

Foaling Season

Not the Saddest Thing in the World

Stillwater Cove

 

 

2. Summer

 

It Begins With the Trees

Banished Wonders

Where the Circles Overlap

When It Comes Down To It

The Magnificent Frigatebird

Blowing on the Wheel

Jar of Scorpions

The First Fish

Joint Custody 

On Skyline and Tar

Cyrus & the Snakes

Only the Faintest Blue

Calling Things What They Are

“I Have Wanted Clarity in Light of My Lack of Light”

Open Water

Thorns

The Mountain Lion

 

 

3. Fall

 

Privacy

It’s the Season I Often Mistake

How We See Each Other

Sports

Proof

Heart on Fire

Power Lines

Hooky

My Father’s Mustache 

Runaway Child

Instrumentation

If I Should Fail

Intimacy

 

 

4. Winter

 

Lover

The Hurting Kind

Against Nostalgia

Forgiveness

Heat

Obedience

The Unspoken

Salvage

What is Handed Down

Too Close

The End of Poetry

 

About the author

Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind. She is the editor of the You Are Here anthology as well as five other collections of poems, including, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is a MacArthur Follow and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She is the new host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Summary

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from U.S. Poet Laureate and MacArthur Fellow 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”?

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.”

Foreword

• Promotional collaboration with ABA to announce paperback release as an Indie Next campaign 
• Paperback release announcement campaign on social media in collaboration with the author
• Digital marketing through the publisher to communities of more than 70K readers and buyers
• Excerpt published on publisher blog and promoted to newsletter list of more than 70K readers, as well as across social media channels
• Targeted Academic outreach to build upon hardcover adoptions 
• Targeted advertising via Meta, Amazon, and Goodreads

Product details

• Authors: Ada Limn, Ada Limón, Limón Ada
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 14.10.2025
• EAN: 9781571315601
• ISBN: 978-1-57131-560-1
• No. of pages: 112
• Dimensions: 139 mm x 215 mm x 6 mm
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Poetry, POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Family, Relating to Latin / Hispanic American people, Hispanic & Latino Studies, POETRY / American / Hispanic & Latino