Witness the wet dead snake,
its long hexagonal pattern weaved
around its body like a code for creation,
curled up cold on the newly tarred road.
Let us begin with the snake: the fact
of death, the poverty of place, of skin
and surface. See how the snake is cut
in two—its body divided from its brain.
Imagine now, how it moves still, both
sides, the tail dancing, the head dancing.
Believe it is the mother and the father.
Believe it is the mouth and the words.
Believe it is the sin and the sinner—
the tempting, the taking, the apple, the fall,
every one of us guilty, the story of us all.
But then return to the snake, poor dead
thing, forcefully denying the split of its being,
longing for life back as a whole, wanting
you to see it for what it is, something
that loves itself so much, it moves across
the boundaries of death, to touch itself
once more, to praise both divided sides
equally, as if it was almost easy.
Hello and welcome to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This episode's poem is Torn by Ada Limón.
I think the first image of this poem that wet dead snake is so incredibly striking, it hooks you right in as a reader and as I delved deeper into the collection it comes from Bright Dead Things1 it became increasingly clear that jarring, odd imagery like that snake are a serious skill of Limón’s.
Ada Limón was recently named the 24th poet laureate of the United States2 and looking at a lot of her work it’s not hard to see why. She possesses a unique gift when it comes to translating the most metaphysical concept to a broad audience without ever pandering, or ‘’dumbing down’’ her poetry. She finds a way to communicate her message without compromise.
In this poem, one of the grandest themes is explored; death and the apprehension of the beyond. Using a simple analogy, a bright dead thing, Limón begins an exploration of what it means to go through death, to experience a separation of states. The snake itself could be a symbol for any kind of dichotomy: life and death, emotion and reason, grief and joy.
Throughout the entire collection this poem belongs, Limón explores these kinds of binaries. She spends much of the collection tackling grief and new experiences. How we as humans are forced to recalibrate in the face of great change, be it something as ordinary as moving a great distance or something as all encompassing as death. This poem acts as a kind of fusion of all the themes in the collection at least for me.
The stark and often macabre imagery of the poem cannot help but leave a mark on the reader, starting with the first section of the poem:
Witness the wet dead snake,
its long hexagonal pattern weaved
around its body like a code for creation,
curled up cold on the newly tarred road.
Immediately the listener is invited to take part in the activity with the speaker, spurred through the imperative to witness the wet dead snake. The objective, almost cold, tone of this observation is driven home by the way the speaker goes on to describe the scene in vivid detail. Limón’s use of enjambment, the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break3, makes the poem mimic the weaving she is writing about. The reader has little choice to follow the speaker through this forensic examination around the scene just as the pattern wraps the snake’s body.
There is a fluidity to the way in which the images slide into one another, the pattern that weaves simultaneously invoking the image of DNA, the code for creation and the ancient symbolism of snakes as immortal objects of rebirth.4 The first instance of dichotomy: Science vs. Myth.
There is a wonderful internal rhyme, to the final line of this section; curled up cold on the newly tarred road. Cold and road bring the enjambment to a satisfying end and Limón leaves us in little doubt that we are moving on with the punctuation mark at the end.
These first four lines are a strong opening and very apt introduction to the way in which Limón regards poetry. She has spoken at length of the act of decentering in poetry.5 The attempt to remove oneself from the poem, eliminate the lyric ‘’ I’’ and focus on something grander.
What’s more this invitation to observe , reflects the benefit Ada Limón believes poetry can bring to our lives. Here she is discussing it in an interview in 2010:
‘’it's a place almost to go and quiet yourself and reconnect and i think that a lot of people have that in religion and it's almost as if the poets are Offering a religion of noticing things or a Religion of paying attention and it's nice that it doesn't have any connotation other than that you know just notice just pay attention just be here I think’’6
That religion of noticing things is a constant in Limón’s work. It is hammered into the reader by the next section:
Let us begin with the snake: the fact
of death, the poverty of place, of skin
and surface. See how the snake is cut
in two—its body divided from its brain.
Imagine now, how it moves still, both
sides, the tail dancing, the head dancing.
The calculated tone let us begin takes on the air of a call to prayer. In the first verse the speaker took account of what was there, now it is what’s not there that matters; death, poverty of place and skin and surface. Limón is once more creating opposition, substance and lack.
That language of observation repeats: see how the snake is cut. When I first read the poem I couldn't separate it from a strong sense of Americana. To me the snake has been run over and is now there dead in the centre of some highway. That poverty of surface is the indentation of the event. Like that very first line, this cold description is all at once striking without alienating the reader. As she writes, we fall naturally in line with Limón's meticulous detail-noting .
It's body divided from its brain is the point at which the speaker begins to build on the insight observations can bring. The contemplation of dichotomies is given a physical form as two oncel living beating things are severed from each other. We are invited to leave this macabre reality behind and imagine something different.
The speaker begins to imagine a situation in which the snake moves still, it’s not immediately clear if this is meant in a spiritual sense, that the snake's essence has continued on or whether they mean a reality in which the snake had not been killed.
It is a departure point for the poem as Limón grants the reader a brief reprieve from so much opposition by providing us with the snake completely unified both
sides, the tail dancing, the head dancing. This version of the snake is whole. Given Limóns religious beliefs it's difficult to imagine her referencing some kind of eternal soul here. She has described herself as a spiritual atheist against organised religion but believing in a sense of connectedness.7
That sense of connectedness extends between realities and states. Life and death are connected here, as are worlds in which something happened and didn’t.
If this section was an introduction to the notion of interconnectedness then the next is a full blown thesis on it:
Believe it is the mother and the father.
Believe it is the mouth and the words.
Believe it is the sin and the sinner—
the tempting, the taking, the apple, the fall,
every one of us guilty, the story of us all.
The image of the snake truly leaves reality behind here and becomes, in Limón’s words, the story of us all. The speaker moves from opposing pairs to collocations, series of word that are nearly always found together8; mother/ father, mouth/ words, sin/sinner.
The repetition of the word believe is the confirmation that cold hard facts we were dealing with have been replaced by faith. Science has given way to myth.
That refrain of believe it is the serves to reestablish the notion of repeating pattern from earlier in the poem. More than that it reminded me instantly of the collective responses to prayer in Christian churches, the unified answer to a prompt from the priest. This is no coincidence as the final lines are lifted directly from christian belief.
the tempting, the taking, the apple, the fall,
every one of us guilty
All taken directly from Garden of Eden tale in the bible.9 The story of Adam and Eve is fired off by the speaker in an almost snapshot sequence. Culminating in the concept of original sin every one of us is guilty. This christian rhetoric comes at us one after the other again and again. To me it felt almost inescapable as though Limón were hammering the point home, showing how something without opposition can be completely constricting.
That barrage of imagery is written with such pace that we feel wrapped up in all those negative emotions; guilt and shame. The reader is left almost breathless until the speaker offers us salvation in the form of the religion of noticing things:
But then return to the snake, poor dead
thing, forcefully denying the split of its being,
longing for life back as a whole, wanting
you to see it for what it is, something
that loves itself so much, it moves across
the boundaries of death, to touch itself
once more, to praise both divided sides
equally, as if it was almost easy.
You as the reader are invited to ground yourself once more in the concrete nature of observance and reality. The relentless christian imagery relaxes and enjambment returns to lend a sense of flow to the poem once more.
The rolling listed details act almost like soothing running water. This time though there is a change to the way in which the scene is depicted. Adjectives and adverbs have found their way into the poem. The snake is now a poor dead thing, that has been forcefully split from its being. There is a real empathy to these lines as the speaker feels a range of emotions associated with death. The sadness of it, the unfairness too.
The snake is now abruptly possessed by agency. There is a longing in it, a wanting. We learn that it loves itself so much and it wants to be whole again. After so much objectivity followed by shame, these new feelings wash over us as readers, that longing finds itself in us. We are left wondering at what precisely Limón is working at. The poet herself has been quite candid about the themes that drove the collection. Here she is explaining them in 2018:
‘’ me personally I was going through a lot of fertility issues my husband and I were trying to get pregnant and didn't and coming to terms with that and then also his father has Alzheimer's and so he lived with us part of the time he's down at home now but so we were dealing with that and what it was to deal with loss and memory and think about aging in a new way so the book is kind of heavy and those themes are prevalent’’10
This dead thing that loves itself so much that it will defy death and logic to become whole again could be any number of these struggles. A woman struggling with fertility, an old man struggling with his identity. In the truest sense it is a being seeking to bridge a division. Each one of these pairs exemplify the title of the poem torn to a tee.
The final lines of the poem encapsulate the way in which all this struggle against division can be resolved. Through acceptance, both of reality and of self:
something
that loves itself so much, it moves across
the boundaries of death, to touch itself
once more, to praise both divided sides
equally, as if it was almost easy.
The snake, possessed of boundless compassion for itself torn though it may be, can defy all natural logic. It does this through radical self acceptance praising both divided sides equally. Taking a poetic leap in logic we see that it will accept the good and bad of its own being. Ada Limón, through her religion of noticing things, is preaching much the same. Through the speaker's observation of the dead thing they’ve recognised that once acceptance is presence becoming whole again looks a simpler affair, as if it was almost easy.
So why this poem? Ada Limón has a firm understanding of in-between states; those little moments we find difficult to define. Through her mining of her own experience she finds a way to pass that on to her audience. On a personal level, the poem grabbed me immediately speaking directly to that sense of being torn inside myself. As we move through our own days, we're asked to make a thousand tiny choices and each one tugs us gently in separate directions. Occasionally our decisions are ruptured by larger events; love, doubt, grief and loss to name a few. Those crossroads moments leave us uncertain as to whether or not we've made the right choice but this poem reminds us that that tear is temporary and that we are always our whole selves again after time to heal.
What did you think of the poem? I'd like to point out, as always, that this is my interpretation and as such very much up for debate.
If you enjoyed the poem and would like to get in touch check out the links in the description.
If you really enjoyed the episode please consider giving me a review wherever you listen.
This week's episode was written and produced by me Benjamin Collopy, the music in this week's episode was by Alan Spijack and is used under creative commons license, you can find a link to his work in the description.
Join me in two weeks time where I'll be taking a closer look at the poetry of Robbie Burns.
Limón Ada. Bright Dead Things. Minneapolis, -: Milkweed Editions, 2015
Italie, Hillel. “Ada Limón Named 24th U.S. Poet Laureate.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, July 13, 2022. https://urlis.net/motfr
“Enjambment - Glossary.” Poetry Archive. The Poetry Archive. Accessed August 3, 2022. https://poetryarchive.org/glossary/enjambment/.
Retief FP, Cilliers L. Snake and staff symbolism, and healing. S Afr Med J. 2002 Jul;92(7):553-6. PMID: 12197200.
Elsner, Maia, and Ada Limón. “What Is Enough for a Poem? an Interview with Ada Limón.” Michigan Quarterly Review. MQR, April 14, 2022. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2022/04/what-is-enough-for-a-poem-an-interview-with-ada-limon.
Ada Limón in Conversation. Youtube. Poets.org, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6R4M_PUnMiDoLt0LVxTwSJ-BTLM49-Tc.
Basile, Lisa Marie, and Ada Limón. “Poetry & Belief: In Conversation with Lisa Marie Basile & Ada Limón.” The Best American Poetry, 2014. https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2014/11/poetry-belief-in-conversation-with-lisa-marie-basile-ada-limon.html.
“Collocation.” Cambridge Dictionary. Accessed August 4, 2022. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/collocation.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story that Created Us. WW Norton & Company, 2017.
Fale, Rich. Ada Limón on "Bright Dead Things: Poems" at the 2018 AWP Book Fair. YouTube. PBS Books, 2018.