Course:A Name, poem by Ada Limón
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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"A Name" by Ada Limón
When Eve walked among
the animals and named them—
nightingale, red-shouldered hawk,
fiddler crab, fallow deer—
I wonder if she ever wanted
them to speak back, looked into
their wide wonderful eyes and
whispered, Name me, name me.
I love Ada Limón’s “A Name” because of the presupposition that Eve named the animals. A name categorizes a thing, gives it a kind of life, and so this poem acts as a third Biblical origin story to Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-3:24. In this origin story, Eve is an active character in creation and not just in humanity’s “original sin”. She is curious and desires a name, any name. This desire for a name is so human and references the fact that she is not named in her initial creation story. She is simply a woman, “of man”. In an Ancient Mediterranean and Near East Studies class I took at UBC, I learned “Adam” actually means “earthling” or “being of clay/mud/soil” in Biblical Hebrew. I learned it is interpreted by modern day people as a proper noun. Knowing that Eve is not simply “of man” but “of earth” makes me want to weep when I read this poem.
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