IN PRAISE OF MYSTERY

In U.S. Poet Laureate Limón’s debut picture book, soaring images and lyrics invite contemplation of life’s wonders—on Earth and perhaps, tantalizingly, elsewhere.

“O second moon,” writes Limón, “we, too, are made / of water, // of vast and beckoning seas.” In visual responses to a poem that will be carried by NASA’s Europa Clipper, a probe scheduled for launch in October 2024 and designed to check Jupiter’s ice-covered ocean moon for possible signs of life, Sís offers flowing glimpses of earthly birds and whales, of heavenly bodies lit with benevolent smiles, and a small light-skinned space traveler flying between worlds in a vessel held aloft by a giant book. Following the undulations of the poet’s cadence, falling raindrops give way to shimmering splashes, then to a climactic fiery vision reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night before finishing with mirrored human figures made of stars. Visual images evocative of the tree of life presage what Límon writes in her afterword: that her poem is as much about “our own precious planet” as it is about what may lie in wait for us to discover on others. “We, too, are made of wonders, of great / and ordinary loves, // of small invisible worlds, // of a need to call out through the dark.”

A luminous call to think about what is and to envision what might be.