Mowing

“Mowing” was published in Ada Limón’s fourth book of poems, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The poem is set in a rural environment in which a speaker observes a man mowing circles around the items of his tree farm as she meditates on how she would like to “disappear” (Line 10) but not in a sad way. She realizes how difficult it is to be human and to stop wanting so many things and “let / the savage grass grow” (Lines 14-15).

Ada Limón was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2022. Her poetry is known for its vulnerability, wit, and exploration of the way human beings interact with the natural world. “Mowing,” and much of Limón’s work, uses the themes of Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Whitman, while also weaving in her own distinctly feminist voice. Many of her pieces consider the personal strength of women, often using animals as metaphors for female empowerment. Limón’s work falls in the category of Eco-feminist poetry, championing a more “feminine” and wholistic approach to human relationships with the natural world. Limón is the daughter of an artist and a teacher. She is Mexican American by heritage, and some of her work explores the nuances of being multi-ethnic in modern day America, often using humor and irony to tackle these challenging themes.

Poet Biography

Ada Limón was born March 28, 1976 and raised in Sonoma, California by her father, a Mexican-American school teacher, and her mother, the visual artist Stacia Brady. After high school, she studied drama at University of Washington and creative writing at New York University. Some of her influential teachers were Marie Howe, Philip Levine, Mark Doty, Sharon Olds, Agha Shahid Ali, and Tom Sleigh. In 2001 she earned her MFA and was subsequently awarded a fellowship to write at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2003, she received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and in the same year won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry.

In 2006 her first two books were published simultaneously after both of them won contests—Lucky Wreck (Lucky House Press), which won the Autumn House Poetry Prize, and This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions), which won the Pearl Poetry Prize. Her subsequent books, Sharks in the Rivers (2010), Bright Dead Things (2015), The Carrying (2018), and The Hurting Kind (2022) were all published by Milkweed Editions. The Carrying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

Limón met and married Lucas Marquardt and moved from Brooklyn to Lexington, Kentucky where her husband works with horses. The rural world of Kentucky inspires much of Limón’s work. In 2022 she was named United States Poet Laureate at the age of 46.

Poem Text

Limón, Ada. “Mowing.” 2015. Words for the Year.

Summary

“Mowing” is a prose poem that starts with an observation. The speaker sees a man “mowing 40 acres on a small lawn mower” (Line 1). The speaker draws the reader’s attention to the size of the lawn mower, noting again “It’s so small,” (Line 2) and “it must take him days” (Line 2) to mow the lawn. She infers that the man must like it. She then gives the reader more information about the man across the street and what he is mowing. He has a tree farm. “He has 10,000 trees”, (Line 3) and the man is mowing a little circle around each one. “One circle here. One circle / there.” (Lines 4-5)

After describing the man mowing circles around his trees, the speaker turns her attention on herself. “My dog and I’ve been watching” (Line 5), she says, from “before the rise, so I’m invis- / ible” (Lines 6-7). She says she likes to stand there, which tells the reader this is her home and that she is an observer of the world. She notes that “The light’s escaping the sky” (Line 5) so the reader knows that it is evening time. She returns her attention to the man making circles: “So many circles.” (Line 8) She notes there are no birds, or at least “none that I can see.” (Line 9) She is subtly making a comparison between herself and the birds. She cannot be seen from where she is “before the rise”, (Line 6) and likely there are plenty of birds around her but they cannot be seen from their hidden spots in the trees.

This observation prompts the speaker to imagine “what it must be like to stay hidden” (Line 9) and to “stay still in the night” (Line 10). She tells the reader “It’s not / sadness, though it may sound like it” (Lines 10-11). She is trying to clarify her emotion here but seems unsure how to express it. She tries again to express the sentiment: “I’m thinking about people / and trees and how I wish I could be silent more” (Lines 11-12). She compares herself to a crow and admits she feels she is “clumsy and loud” (Line 13). She sees the trees as being more desirable, “cool white pine” (Line 13). The poem ends with a realization about human beings and the human mind in particular; she notes “it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let / the savage grass grow” (Lines 14-15). This final comparison alludes to the first observation she makes, that the man across the street is changing the shape of the grass instead of just letting it grow wild.