I love Kim Addonizio!
I think it is important as poets and authors to share with others the work we love. Kim Addonizio is one of my biggest poetic influences. I have always wanted to review her. So, I have decided to do just that today. Hopefully, this will be helpful for you. Here we go!
In her first collection, Tell Me, there is a poem called “Collapsing Poem." In it Addonizio writes of a couple fighting. Not only is the reader’s voyeurism uncomfortably mentioned here, but also our attachment to the characters in the poem: “and you want more than anything is what/the man in the poem wants: for her to shut up” (29-30). She doesn’t merely say, “be quiet,” she uses a more brutal of all quieting words, “Shut up.” As readers, we are strung along on this heartbreaking journey, then punched with humor. It is jarring and so we laugh in the darkness.
In Addonizio’s poem “Dead Girls,” from the Collection What is This Thing Called Love, she writes that they “show up often in movies, facedown/in the weeds beside the highway’ (1-2). She uses the image of a “Dead Girls” as seen on television and in movies. The poem shows us what a girl should be doing in a setting of normalcy according to societies standards. Then, the poem shows the girls rebelling against society’s representation of beauty and femininity by being dead. This is seen when Addonizio writes “…Anyone can play her, /any child off the street” (11-12). This is an eerie way to discuss a feminine gender role, something that has been discussed over and over again. Addonizio treats the idea refreshingly with this eerie image of “Dead Girls.”
Poetry on the Weekend:
Friday, July 10:
Most Wanted Fine Art Presents
feat. Carolyne Whelan, Meghan Tutolo, and Courtney Lora Lang
Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery
5015 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Garfield)
7:00pm - ? - (570)575-6557
Saturday, July 11:
Time Management for Writers
Aubrey Hirsch, author, editor and creative writing professor at Chatham
University leads this free workshop presented by the Pittsburgh Writers Project.
Greentree Public Library
10 W Manilla Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Greentree)
10:00am - free - (412)921-9292
In her first collection, Tell Me, there is a poem called “Collapsing Poem." In it Addonizio writes of a couple fighting. Not only is the reader’s voyeurism uncomfortably mentioned here, but also our attachment to the characters in the poem: “and you want more than anything is what/the man in the poem wants: for her to shut up” (29-30). She doesn’t merely say, “be quiet,” she uses a more brutal of all quieting words, “Shut up.” As readers, we are strung along on this heartbreaking journey, then punched with humor. It is jarring and so we laugh in the darkness.
In Addonizio’s poem “Dead Girls,” from the Collection What is This Thing Called Love, she writes that they “show up often in movies, facedown/in the weeds beside the highway’ (1-2). She uses the image of a “Dead Girls” as seen on television and in movies. The poem shows us what a girl should be doing in a setting of normalcy according to societies standards. Then, the poem shows the girls rebelling against society’s representation of beauty and femininity by being dead. This is seen when Addonizio writes “…Anyone can play her, /any child off the street” (11-12). This is an eerie way to discuss a feminine gender role, something that has been discussed over and over again. Addonizio treats the idea refreshingly with this eerie image of “Dead Girls.”
Poetry on the Weekend:
Friday, July 10:
Most Wanted Fine Art Presents
feat. Carolyne Whelan, Meghan Tutolo, and Courtney Lora Lang
Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery
5015 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Garfield)
7:00pm - ? - (570)575-6557
Saturday, July 11:
Time Management for Writers
Aubrey Hirsch, author, editor and creative writing professor at Chatham
University leads this free workshop presented by the Pittsburgh Writers Project.
Greentree Public Library
10 W Manilla Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Greentree)
10:00am - free - (412)921-9292
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