The speaker
Most of Ada Limón's poems feature the strong presence of a first-person narrator, with emotional complexity and everyday details from her life. Ada Limón has acknowledged openly that her speaker is usually simply herself: she writes in a highly autobiographical manner, and the struggles of her poetic speaker are drawn from her life. In "The Leash," the speaker is admitting her own fear and despair at the state of the world. In "Wife," we see an echo of this despair in the image of the speaker staring despondently out into the morning and crying. Limón's poems give a raw and vulnerable glimpse into her emotional and physical life, making their heights of inspiring emotion all the more real.
Limón's husband
Ada's partner in real life is Lucas Marquardt, a horse racing journalist for whom Ada moved to Kentucky in 2011. Her recent books have the dedication "For Lucas and Lily Bean [their dog]." Otherwise, however, his identity is kept subtler than Ada's own in her poems. Most often, her husband appears as the second-person "you," as in "Wife," where the speaker confesses her love, and "Dead Stars," where both spouses are rolling out the trash and recycling together. In the latter poem, her husband serves the brief but important role of questioning why they know so few constellations, acting as a kind of foil to the speaker's romantic tendencies. His presence, though subtle, is often as a steadfast source of love, connection, and grounding amidst the poems' meandering trains of thought.
Limón's dog
Sharing her books' dedication with Lucas is Ada Limón's pug, Lily Bean. Like her husband in "Dead Stars," Ada's dog acts as a kind of foil in "The Leash" and other poems: her simple, instinct-driven love and desire run contrary to the speaker's dark, ruminating thoughts. The dog's leash becomes a symbol of what keeps the speaker tethered to hope and survival. Limón has written about how Lily Bean has helped alleviate her homesickness and connect her with the world. The dog's presence in the poems is sometimes unseen, too: though the event does not feature in the text, "Instructions for Not Giving Up" was inspired by a dog walk among spring trees.
Animals
Other animals appear constantly throughout Limón's poems: often horses (unsurprising given Limón's husband's profession and their Kentucky environs), but also other dogs, fish, wild mammals, birds, etc. In "The Wild Divine" from Bright Dead Things, a horse appears as a quasi-godlike elder that affirms the speaker's wildness and connection to nature. Female racehorses are the centerpiece of "How to Triumph Like a Girl," a feminist symbol of wildness. The Hurting Kind begins with "Give Me This," a small, kind poem about a groundhog sparking joy in the speaker. Often, Limón's poetic animals serve these purposes: as inspirations, friends, and reminders of the speaker's own animal-ness. Other times, they are a darker symbol of loss or destruction, such as the belly-up fish in "The Leash." Limón undoubtedly uses animals for her own symbolic purposes in her poems: rather than simply reporting how they are in nature, she maintains a careful balance between excessively romanticizing them and honoring their independence as creatures.
The reader
Like Limón's husband, the reader is often the "you" in her poems. Sometimes, as in "The Leash," the reader is addressed as such; other times, as in "How to Triumph Like a Girl," there is a vague "you" that is all-encompassing enough to invite the reader into the poems. Limón's readers are not held at arm's length or removed from her writing process but addressed directly as co-creators of whatever connection or understanding the poem seeks to achieve.
