Kim Addonizio

Poems of loneliness and late nights, liquor and loss.

Poems

Tell Me

What I find most appealing in this collection is the raw, unvarnished directness. "Poems of loneliness and late nights, liquor and loss," As the description aptly puts it, distills the outline of her work: a miserable, bruised landscape of alcohol, sex, devastation, and an insatiable hunger for love. Noting that gut-punch first line from Phantom Anniversary: "Imagine the marriage lasting."

Glass, in particular, turns being drunk and miserable to something visceral: "Christ but I'm thirsty, and I want to tell you something, come close I want to whisper it… don’t go yet, stay, stay, give me your shoulder to lean against." 

Addonizio floats between explicit and unapologetically vulnerable. Her work is a dark, jagged mirror to the lives of those in turmoil. Some parts, admittedly, are startling—almost unsettling in their directness.

"Because writing is lonely work, is what I'm trying to say."

🍁

What I find most appealing in this collection is the raw, unvarnished directness. "Poems of loneliness and late nights, liquor and loss," As the description aptly puts it, distills the outline of her work: a miserable, bruised landscape of alcohol, sex, devastation, and an insatiable hunger for love. Noting that gut-punch first line from Phantom Anniversary: "Imagine the marriage lasting."

Glass, in particular, turns being drunk and miserable to something visceral: "Christ but I'm thirsty, and I want to tell you something, come close I want to whisper it… don’t go yet, stay, stay, give me your shoulder to lean against." 

Addonizio floats between explicit and unapologetically vulnerable. Her work is a dark, jagged mirror to the lives of those in turmoil. Some parts, admittedly, are startling—almost unsettling in their directness.

"Because writing is lonely work, is what I'm trying to say."

Tell Me Poems

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