On Monday, May 5, students gathered in Elfers Hall for the annual Lambert Lecture, which was delivered by United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

The Lambert Lecture was founded in 1981 in memory of Christopher Lambert ’76 by Mary and Paul Lambert ’46. The series brings a distinguished poet or author to speak to the community, attend English classes, and meet with students and faculty each year. Ms. Limón’s visit added to the school’s celebration of women as part of the 50th anniversary of coeducation.

Dr. Katie Fleishman, head of the English department, Albert Chen ’26, and Skye Radtke ’25 introduced Ms. Limón. Dr. Fleishman expressed appreciation for Ms. Limón’s “How to Triumph Like a Girl,” a poem Ms. Limón went on to read.

Ms.  Limón  is  from  Sonoma, California. She earned a B.A. from the University of Washington and a M.F.A. in poetry from New York University.  She  has  written  six collections of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2018.

In 2022, Ms. Limón was named the 24th poet laureate of the United States and first Latina laureate by the Library of Congress. She was reappointed for a second two-year term  in  2023. The  poet  laureate promotes  appreciation  for  poetry and the literary arts by participating in lectures, readings, and individual projects.

As the poet laureate, Ms. Limón pursued a project aimed at bringing poetry  to  the  country’s  national parks. Her initiative, “You Are Here: Poetry in Parks,” resulted in the installation of seven fully-accessible picnic  tables  at  national  parks around the country, each featuring a poem by an American poet. The closest table to the school is at the Cape Cod National Seashore park; it features Mary Oliver’s poem, “Can You Imagine?”

Ms.  Limón  read  12  poems, including “The Raincoat,” “Sports,” “A  Good  Story,”  “In  Praise  of Mystery,”  and  “Startlement.”  She described  working  with  Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown on editing “Sports”—a piece exploring the  way  in  which  talking  about baseball  allowed  her  father  and step-father to navigate the tension between them. She also spoke about how her love for the Earth infused her poem “In Praise of Mystery,” which was engraved by NASA on the  Europa  Clipper,  a  spacecraft currently headed to the second moon of Jupiter.

Multiple English classes read Ms. Limón’s work in the weeks leading up to the lecture, so many students came into the evening familiar with her work. Maya Grogean ’26 said, “Ms. Limón was very moving and an excellent choice for the Lambert lecture.  Her  poems  were  very emotional and raw. I felt privileged to hear them.”

How to Triumph Like a Girl

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

-Ada Limón