Volume 3, No. 10 January 24, 2003
Addonizio’s work celebrates passion Reading scheduled for Jan. 30 at Red Gallery A Review By Angela Merta To open Kim Addonizio’s books, especially her most recent book of poems, "Tell Me," is like taking a seat on an imaginary barstool amid the grit and peanuts, and overhearing conversations of love, sex and tattoos. Characteristically, in her online journal she writes, "It is difficult to walk the middle way; maybe we aren’t meant to, maybe we are meant to be crazed and passionate and obsessed and despairing and comic and lyrical and tragic in our attempts to ‘make our mark’ on the world." Her poems depict the unrestrained worlds of broken hearts and addictive relationships, shot through with moments of sober clarity in the face of harsh indifference. The self as examiner and confessor in her work embodies the fantastic quality that can be found in all good poems. The architecture the poet builds, whether confessional or not, is one that allows for an exquisite nostalgia where both reader and writer meet and are curiously familiar with one another. In her poem "Ha," she actually invites the reader into the narrative: You’re thinking now you’d better have a double. You get up, holding your hip, and limp toward the neon martini glass. Anyway, a man goes into a bar, just like you do. He’s tired of life, tired of being alone. Like most good art, her work is painfully self-reflective and embodies nuanced feats of self-creation as well. Her voice is approachable and generous. It feels distinctly — dare I say — female in nature. A visit to her Web site (http://addonizio.home.mindspring.com/) reveals everything from personal journal entries to an intimate glimpse of her most recent tattoo. In her online journal Addonizio’s informal ramblings often seem as wise as her poems: "You have to develop a strong will against the nightmare of the world in order to live your dream. We must help each other in this; it is the key thing." For all the edginess in some of her work, she also writes with an intuitive sensitivity about a life beyond the page. In "Collapsing Poem," the self-conscious voice gains strength through detachment and a more formal address of the reader: She begs the man, but he won’t let her in. Say it matters what happened between them; say you can’t judge whose fault this all is, given the lack of context, given your own failures with those you meant most to love. Addonizio is the author of three books of poetry and one book of stories. She is also co-author of a guide to poetry writing and co-editor of an anthology titled "Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos." Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. The Georgia Poetry Circuit and Savannah College of Art and Design will sponsor a reading by Addonizio Jan. 30 at 7p.m. in Red Gallery, 201 E. Broughton St. The Georgia Poetry Circuit is funded by the Savannah College of Art and Design, The Georgia Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Merta is a liberal arts professor at SCAD.
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