Poetry
April 4-25, 2027
Tiered Tuition
$100-$300 Reserve My Spot
About the Offering
Sundays, April 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th at 3pm (Eastern)
Join award-winning teacher and poet Major Jackson as he delves into the critically acclaimed work of two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón.
In his Harvard Review article about Limón and her work, critic Kevin O’Conner said, “Whether her poems express mourning, longing, or wonder, readers might feel as if they are having a conversation with Limón, albeit one delivered through sinuous, rhythmic syntax, in diction that’s at once informal and exact… [She] risks emotional transparency, even deliberate naiveté, to make the case for loving the world even as it breaks our hearts.”
For three weeks, attendees will let their hearts break as Jackson leads them in an online exploration of Limón’s collections and poetics. In the fourth and final week, Limón will zoom in for an interview with Jackson and a Q&A with attendees.
Required reading: TBD
Major Jackson presents: Why We Love… is an annual FAWC Online education and interview series celebrating the work of our most beloved poets.
About the Instructor/Moderator
Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023). His forthcoming cookbook, A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, will be published in October 2026. His honors include fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He is the inaugural recipient of the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize in American Poetry from Yale Library. Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and World Literature Today. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a 2024 Time Magazine Woman of the Year. She is the author of two picture books, In Praise of Mystery as well as And, Too, The Fox, and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, and her short-form non-fiction book Against Breaking: On The Power of Poetry, was released in 2026.
