As I note in my review of her poetry collection Lucky Wreck, Ada Limón uses a significant amount of negation to show resistance and refusal, among other things. She also uses interjections to assert herself and add agency to the speakers of her poems. Because these techniques are so prominent in her poetry, I chose to focus on them.
While explores ways in which Limón uses negation, I came across her poem “Thirteen Feral Cats” and her line “he seemed to think the walls were unbelieving” (66). I found the idea of unbelieving to be fascinating. However, when I began to write my poem, I couldn’t think of anything to write about, so I again skimmed through her collection and saw her poem “Selecting Things for Vagueness,” its long list of no statements, and its first line “I want to know some things” (18). I was still mulling over the idea of unbelieving and I loved the juxtaposition of unknowing something.
I jumped between different ideas for my first lines. I originally wrote “I want to unbelieve some things/other things unknow altogether. Have no/idea children are little adults,/yet to sprout marching legs and arms.” I liked the image of children sprouting like plants into adults, but I couldn’t quite get the wording and rhythm right, especially when juxtaposed to the first two lines, so I nixed this image and began brainstorming others. I came up with things like “sour-squish-my-face-taste of lemon,” to echo Limón’s use of oranges (and, quite honestly, I always picture lemons when I read her name). I also kept writing her phrase my little bone baby from “The Circus Folk Find Fault in Their Own Humanness” all over my page in my elegant cursive—I just love the sound of it and how the baby image softened the idea bone (29).
After juggling some different phrases and images, I no longer liked my first two lines “I want to unbelieve…,” at least for the beginning, but I couldn’t fit them anywhere else in the poem. And being the stubborn writer, I refused to not have them in there in some way. This is how I actually ended up with my poem’s title, “I want to un-know some things.”
Once I moved this idea to the title, it was a little easier to continue the poem. I began to brainstorm ideas for what unknowing is not, but I couldn’t think in terms of what something wasn’t. If I couldn’t think in terms of what something was not, why not turn the phrase around and think of what it is? With this idea in mind, I thought about what unknowing was and how people generally fear the unknown. This put me on the train of thought that the unknown is really just when we don’t know how things are going to end—specifically, how we’re going to die. Thinking of unknowing like this gave me the line “unknowing is not the end,” after which I knew I wanted to end the poem by saying that “Knowing is…”
At this point, I had my first line and the beginning of my last line. Now I had to somehow incorporate my idea of unbelieving again. However, when I started exploring how I could do this, I found that the use of unbelieving and unknowing in the same poem divided the attention of the poem, especially when the poem was already short. What I had already written with unknowing was stronger, and unbelieving just detracted from it. So I tossed unbelieving back into the treasure chest of poem ideas.
Once I did this, I found that the poem opened up more and I had a much easier time writing it despite the continued difficulty of thinking in terms of negation. Since the first line declared “unknowing is not the end,” I began thinking of the theme as listing “effects” and “endings,” rather than events or items that held suspense or a lack of knowledge. My brain had a sudden burst of energy and I found that using negation opened up so many more imagery possibilities.
After all, if I were to try and describe everything an orange is, I would, for example, be confined to that fruit and descriptions or ideas that I could associate with it, whereas if I describe what an orange is not, that gives me a multitude of possibilities and fruit to use. There’s a limit to the number of ways I could describe an orange, but as soon as I describe the opposite, the creative possibilities become infinite.
As a result, and as a nod to Limón, I got rid of my lemon idea and wrote, “[unknowing is] not an orange (I mean the sucker-punch-your-taste-buds kind).” The orange image ended up working really well with the idea of unknowing, since while lemons are always sour, an orange could be very sweet or very tart.
This is how I finished my ending of “Knowing is,” though at this time, I changed it to “Unknowing is not…” Because unknowing was not an ending, that meant there was still a lack of knowledge—there was still a surprise, so to speak. I felt that the confetti imagery worked well as an end, because confetti is associated with surprise, or the unknown (though it is often thrown after the surprise has been revealed). I thought this embodied the theme of unknowing really well in a concrete image. And the idea of confetti clumping instead of showering down offered a nice surprise to an otherwise overdone image.
After all this work in trying to write using negation, adding interjections was significantly easier. I first used the interjection with my description of the orange, which enabled me to add depth to the imagery—instead of just saying “not an orange,” I was able to add more sensory imagery in how it tasted.
In addition to this, I wrote the interjection “not the jagged/scar (the one from the swelling/appendix that couldn’t wait/to be let out).” However, upon revision, I found that this interjection did not work as well as the others. While it was interesting to anthropomorphize the appendix, it wasn’t as strong as the other two interjections—most notably because it was the appendix taking action and interjecting, not the speaker. The wording of this interjection was also just long and awkward compared to the other two—it became a distraction from the poem and the stronger writing around it.
For my final interjection and the ending to my poem, I wrote, “well, mister,” another nod to Limón, “what did you expect paper to do in the rain?” This interjection ultimately allowed me to do two: add complexity and really just end the poem. While writing, it became harder to think of more images for what unknowing wasn’t without the poem just becoming a long list. After all, if the image possibilities were now limitless with the use of negation, what would keep the poem from doing just that? So, I looked to Limón’s poem “Selecting Things for Vagueness,” which she ends by stating “well mister, this I know for certain” (18).
In a poem listing so many not’s and doubt due to those negations, she ended on a note of certainty. With this in mind, I was able to write the question “what did you expect paper to do in the rain?,” which acted as a way to turn the poem back on the reader and add that punch of conviction that was present in Limón’s work.
While explores ways in which Limón uses negation, I came across her poem “Thirteen Feral Cats” and her line “he seemed to think the walls were unbelieving” (66). I found the idea of unbelieving to be fascinating. However, when I began to write my poem, I couldn’t think of anything to write about, so I again skimmed through her collection and saw her poem “Selecting Things for Vagueness,” its long list of no statements, and its first line “I want to know some things” (18). I was still mulling over the idea of unbelieving and I loved the juxtaposition of unknowing something.
I jumped between different ideas for my first lines. I originally wrote “I want to unbelieve some things/other things unknow altogether. Have no/idea children are little adults,/yet to sprout marching legs and arms.” I liked the image of children sprouting like plants into adults, but I couldn’t quite get the wording and rhythm right, especially when juxtaposed to the first two lines, so I nixed this image and began brainstorming others. I came up with things like “sour-squish-my-face-taste of lemon,” to echo Limón’s use of oranges (and, quite honestly, I always picture lemons when I read her name). I also kept writing her phrase my little bone baby from “The Circus Folk Find Fault in Their Own Humanness” all over my page in my elegant cursive—I just love the sound of it and how the baby image softened the idea bone (29).
After juggling some different phrases and images, I no longer liked my first two lines “I want to unbelieve…,” at least for the beginning, but I couldn’t fit them anywhere else in the poem. And being the stubborn writer, I refused to not have them in there in some way. This is how I actually ended up with my poem’s title, “I want to un-know some things.”
Once I moved this idea to the title, it was a little easier to continue the poem. I began to brainstorm ideas for what unknowing is not, but I couldn’t think in terms of what something wasn’t. If I couldn’t think in terms of what something was not, why not turn the phrase around and think of what it is? With this idea in mind, I thought about what unknowing was and how people generally fear the unknown. This put me on the train of thought that the unknown is really just when we don’t know how things are going to end—specifically, how we’re going to die. Thinking of unknowing like this gave me the line “unknowing is not the end,” after which I knew I wanted to end the poem by saying that “Knowing is…”
At this point, I had my first line and the beginning of my last line. Now I had to somehow incorporate my idea of unbelieving again. However, when I started exploring how I could do this, I found that the use of unbelieving and unknowing in the same poem divided the attention of the poem, especially when the poem was already short. What I had already written with unknowing was stronger, and unbelieving just detracted from it. So I tossed unbelieving back into the treasure chest of poem ideas.
Once I did this, I found that the poem opened up more and I had a much easier time writing it despite the continued difficulty of thinking in terms of negation. Since the first line declared “unknowing is not the end,” I began thinking of the theme as listing “effects” and “endings,” rather than events or items that held suspense or a lack of knowledge. My brain had a sudden burst of energy and I found that using negation opened up so many more imagery possibilities.
After all, if I were to try and describe everything an orange is, I would, for example, be confined to that fruit and descriptions or ideas that I could associate with it, whereas if I describe what an orange is not, that gives me a multitude of possibilities and fruit to use. There’s a limit to the number of ways I could describe an orange, but as soon as I describe the opposite, the creative possibilities become infinite.
As a result, and as a nod to Limón, I got rid of my lemon idea and wrote, “[unknowing is] not an orange (I mean the sucker-punch-your-taste-buds kind).” The orange image ended up working really well with the idea of unknowing, since while lemons are always sour, an orange could be very sweet or very tart.
This is how I finished my ending of “Knowing is,” though at this time, I changed it to “Unknowing is not…” Because unknowing was not an ending, that meant there was still a lack of knowledge—there was still a surprise, so to speak. I felt that the confetti imagery worked well as an end, because confetti is associated with surprise, or the unknown (though it is often thrown after the surprise has been revealed). I thought this embodied the theme of unknowing really well in a concrete image. And the idea of confetti clumping instead of showering down offered a nice surprise to an otherwise overdone image.
After all this work in trying to write using negation, adding interjections was significantly easier. I first used the interjection with my description of the orange, which enabled me to add depth to the imagery—instead of just saying “not an orange,” I was able to add more sensory imagery in how it tasted.
In addition to this, I wrote the interjection “not the jagged/scar (the one from the swelling/appendix that couldn’t wait/to be let out).” However, upon revision, I found that this interjection did not work as well as the others. While it was interesting to anthropomorphize the appendix, it wasn’t as strong as the other two interjections—most notably because it was the appendix taking action and interjecting, not the speaker. The wording of this interjection was also just long and awkward compared to the other two—it became a distraction from the poem and the stronger writing around it.
For my final interjection and the ending to my poem, I wrote, “well, mister,” another nod to Limón, “what did you expect paper to do in the rain?” This interjection ultimately allowed me to do two: add complexity and really just end the poem. While writing, it became harder to think of more images for what unknowing wasn’t without the poem just becoming a long list. After all, if the image possibilities were now limitless with the use of negation, what would keep the poem from doing just that? So, I looked to Limón’s poem “Selecting Things for Vagueness,” which she ends by stating “well mister, this I know for certain” (18).
In a poem listing so many not’s and doubt due to those negations, she ended on a note of certainty. With this in mind, I was able to write the question “what did you expect paper to do in the rain?,” which acted as a way to turn the poem back on the reader and add that punch of conviction that was present in Limón’s work.