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Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Ada Limón’s poems are out of this world, literally. This month, the U.S. Poet Laureate’s “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” which was engraved on NASA spacecraft Europa Clipper, will be launched almost two billion miles to the moons of Jupiter, to orbit the planet by 2030. It will also be her debut children’s picture book, adding to her oeuvre of six books of poetry, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning The Carrying (she bought a used Mazda hatchback with the book money), the National Book Award finalist Bright Dead Things (which she sold for $500), and the Griffin Poetry Prize-shortlisted The Hurting Kind. She also wrote a poem, commissioned by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, for the climate report Fifth National Climate Assessment. Recently she read a poem she wrote at the White House to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (she’s also attended a state dinner, for president of France Emmanuel Macron).
Until the end of the year Limón is touring the country for her You Are Here project, which draws its title from the nature poetry anthology she edited and installed picnic tables etched with poems as public art in seven national parks, including Cape Cod National Seashore, where she lived for a year. She teaches in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina.
The Sonoma, CA-born and -raised, and -based (Glen Ellen, after living in Lexington, KY for years) MacArthur Fellow (she was in her kitchen when she found out), Guggenheim Fellow, and a TIME woman of the year, is serving two terms as poet laureate (2022-2025). She majored in theater at the University of Washington and earned an MFA from NYU; hosted the podcast “The Slowdown”; does yoga, meditates, and sets a daily intention. She has been a USA Today crossword puzzle clue; is Mexican, Irish, and Scottish; has a pug named Lily Bean; worked in magazine marketing with her work appearing on taxi ads; lived in Germany as a 17-year-old following a boyfriend and, later, in Williamsburg. She was awarded the Governor’s Medal for the Arts from Governor Andy Beshear; as a young adult worked at Readers’ Books in Sonoma, which installed a bench in her honor; has a palm in W.S. Merwin’s palm forest in Maui she named Europa.
Fan of: Nature; writing outside and bird-watching; the rain and heat; collecting stones from beaches and river walks; Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” Argentinian-born Ukrainian poet Alejandra Pizarnik, and Auden; hiking in Raven Run nature sanctuary in Lexington; is a water person (but not a winter person); nostalgia; Sonoma Mountain range (she owns an apartment on Moon Mountain in the Mayacamas Mountain Range); Flashdance and good tequila; dancing (she took classes in college and during the pandemic) and making lists; road trips; “Your Song” by Elton John, which she grew up hearing then saw live at the LOC Gershwin Prize ceremony; Jeopardy! (she read video clues for the Pure Poetry category on a Masters episode); Joni Mitchell; Nate’s Coffee.
Not so much: Crowds and her vertigo.
Can do: Officiate weddings.
No can do: Read at night. Pick up her book recs below any time.
The book that:
…helped me through a loss:
There was a whole year in New York City, where I read What the Living Do by Marie Howe about a million times. It speaks so piercingly to the absurd dailiness of living when someone you love is no longer here. I remember living inside those poems because they made me, my grief, feel beheld.
…made me weep uncontrollably:
The end of Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend is a textured and subtle gift. I can picture the last scene as if I am there. As if it’s my own memory hidden in my body. “Sunshine, not too hot, nice breeze, birdsong.” There’s a tenderness and an acute attention to grief that still pierces me when I revisit the book. It’s not just about the loss of a friend, but the risk we take when we dare to love any living thing.
…I recommend over and over again:
I will give anyone who will listen, anyone I meet really, the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Every line feels like a necessary spell that we desperately need on this planet. This is the book that has helped me reimagine my own relationship with the natural world. Kimmerer’s description of reciprocity shifted my own sense of belonging. I return to it again and again not only for its wisdom but for its invitation to live a more deeply connected life.
…shaped my worldview:
Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg served as not just a book but a paradigm shift for me. I remember when I first read the book, I was living in New York City and desperately trying to figure out how to live in a way that felt in line with my beliefs, my heart, my body. I was struck by how the daily practice of metta meditation or loving kindness meditation allowed me to move differently in the world. As a writer and an observer, I always thought I was too attached to this world, and this book opened up a new way of offering love outward, to using my attachments as a way of offering instead of owning.
…I read in one sitting, it was that good:
I read Foster by Claire Keegan in one night. It’s a short book, so that’s not unusual, but the prose was so precise. Effortless and masterful. I find her writing to perfectly balance the power of brevity and the weight of emotional tension. Also, I love how well the child narration works in this book. Serious and true. Like children!
…I’d give to a new graduate:
I love Ross Gay and his poems, two books of his come to mind when I think of gifting books to folks starting out in their journey. The first is his book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, a book of poems that shows us how grief and joy are intertwined in such a sticky, messy feast that it’s best to surrender to their unlikely marriage and take it all in. The Book of Delights is a great gift for a new graduate, because it is a wise lesson on what happens when you pay attention to the world around you. The Book of Delights reminds you not to miss your life.
…made me laugh out loud:
I remember sitting on a plane and reading Less by Andrew Sean Greer and having to hide my laughter for fear folks around me would think I’d gone bonkers in the bulkhead row. Writing anything “funny” seems to me about the hardest thing one can do, but that book made me laugh out loud and it gave me something else, the idea of watching the world with amusement. When your life feels utterly tragic, overly dramatic, you can laugh at the absurdity of the self.
…broke my heart:
The book of poems You Can Be the Last Leaf by Maya Abu Al-Hayaat translated by Fady Joudah broke my heart over and over, and it’s still breaking my heart. The descriptions of life and motherhood in Palestine carefully wrought with expert poetic impulses will live forever in my mind.
…features a character I love to hate:
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra is such a wonderful book about what it is to be a poet in this world. I’ll admit that I sometimes found the main character so frustrating because of his own inability to edit his poems and make them better. And his own lack of communication skills. Poets! But the book is such a true view into the mind and life of a writer and the vibrant poetic life in Chile.
…sealed a friendship:
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson was such a triumph of tender witnessing that it has sparked countless conversations with (primarily) women. The Argonauts speaks to the body in complex and twisting ways, and it pays as much homage to the brain and its untamable tangents as it does the body and its relentless desires.
…surprised me:
Milkman by Anna Burns is a spiraling, bizarre, and utterly unique book that I resisted at first, and then absolutely fell under its spell. It’s an intricate narrative that shows what it is to be a woman living in violent times unable or unwilling to claim your own agency. Some of the finest writing I’ve read.
Bonus question:
If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
The Library of Congress of course.
Riza Cruz is an editor and writer based in New York.