In “The Noiseness of Sleep,” I was most attracted to the alliteration. The first line of the poem begins with the hard, C of careful, and ends, similarly, with the word carry. Further down, in the poem’s third stanza, are the words “coaxing” and “calm,” which share the same alliterative quality. Seldom, in this poem, are lines end-stopped. The second line of the poem ends in a comma but, often, lines continue without a syntactical break. I also enjoyed the contents of this poem, the lines:

“I’ve been a long time worried  

about grasping infinity  

and coaxing some calm  

out of the softest part  

of the pins and needles 

of me. . . .”

Why does Limón put two poems, similar in structure, back-to-back? I noticed this also in the last poems we read from her book, “The Vine,” and “After You Toss Around the Ashes,” which are prose poems. Why might  “The Noisiness of Sleep,” and “We are Surprised” be ordered the way they are?

One of my favorite images from the second poem, “We are Surprised,” is “roadside stray cats.” In the poems we’ve read thus far, Limón has always been very specific in her descriptions of land, and animals. Why might this be? What effect does this specificity have on her poems?

In the next poem, “The Long Ride,” I enjoyed one of the lines which ends the poem: “How good it is to love / live things. . . .” This line, like so many in Limón’s poems, is complicated, and nuanced, and completely unhinging. What does this poem say about death more broadly?

I’d be interested in knowing which poems were classroom favorites, and which were more difficult to parse. Which poems had particularly interesting diction, enjambment, or forms?