Ada Limón’s Final Lecture as Poet Laureate: “You have to love.”

Winding down her historic two- term, three-year appointment as the 24th U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón defended poetry as a tool for courage, personal healing and community connection.

More than a farewell, her final lecture last week in the Coolidge Auditorium was a love letter to poetry, to libraries and librarians and to the collective soul of a country still learning how to feel. Her lecture, titled “Against Breaking: On the Public and Private Power of Poetry,” framed poetry as a shared, not solitary, experience and as a celebration of humanity’s range of voices and perspectives at its core.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden praised Limón as “one of the greatest voices of this century” and said her work “has helped to extend and deepen the Library’s outreach and partnership, moving us closer to the vision of connecting all Americans.”

Limón’s signature project as poet laureate, “You Are Here,” involved creating permanent poetry installations in seven national parks.

Through a collaboration with NASA, she also composed the first poem ever to launch into space — it began its journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa last year engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper. Limón recalled visiting communities across America as poet laureate and meeting people who turned to poetry as solace or a lifeline during grief, isolation or transition. She met a grandfather who memorized poems and left them to his grandchildren before he died and a woman born in Mexico who wrote poems in Spanish and translated them into English to witness the world in two languages. People told her about carrying poems in their back pockets, reading them in hospitals, at funerals, or writing them again after years of silence.

Addressing the rise of AI and its role in creating art, Limón noted that poetry’s true value is its human element and unrivaled power in capturing human experiences and providing comfort and understanding. She praised libraries as sacred spaces and repositories of memory “for anyone with curiosity to learn and explore.”

Limón’s lecture carried a quiet undercurrent of activism in uncertain times, not loud or preachy, but rather to stress the power of words to bring people together. Looking out into the packed auditorium, the soft-spoken poet encouraged people to “stand in poetry” to gather courage and find hope and strength again.

“If you need to be reminded of what makes us human, tender, brave, flawed and worthy of love, then you need poetry.…You do not have to love poetry, but you have to love something; even simpler: You have to love,” she said, drawing a rousing ovation.

In an interview, Limón, 49, said she has always believed in poetry’s enduring power to help people connect.

“My whole life, I really felt that,” she said. “As a kid, I was very moved by going to poetry readings at the local bookstore, and I felt that it was important to hear poetry out loud.”

Limón’s lecture was a reminder that the ancient art of poetry still holds a vital place in society.

“As she said, the right poem can make us recommit to the world,” said Karen González, a member of Tintas DC, a group of budding Hispanic writers in the Washington, D.C., area. Limón, an award-winning author of six books of poetry, is the first Latina to serve as U.S. poet laureate. Her latest book, a compilation of new and earlier poems, will come out in September.

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