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| Kim Addonizio (B. 1954) |
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Lauded as tough, vulnerable and quirky, award-winning American poet and novelist, Kim Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954. The daughter of a champion tennis player and newspaper sportswriter, Ms. Addonizio grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and briefly attended Georgetown University before moving to San Francisco in 1976, where she received a B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University.
A handful of early occupations from fry cook to auto parts bookkeeper reveals the same grit and authenticity found in her writing. Currently, Kim resides in Oakland, California. When not involved in pen and paper endeavors you're apt to find her weightlifting, on the tennis court, playing the “Mississippi saxophone” (the harmonica), practicing yoga or listening to the blues.
Ms. Addonizio has authored four poetry collections: The Philosopher's Club (1994) Jimmy & Rita (1997) and Tell Me (2000), all published by BOA Editions—as well as What Is This Thing Called Love (2004) by W.W. Norton. A poetry chapbook, Dark Veil, appears in Sextet/One (1996) from Pennywhistle Press.
In addition, she is the author of a collection of short stories, In the Box Called Pleasure (1999) and co-author of Three West Coast Women (1987) with Laurie Duesing and Dorianne Laux, The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997) with Dorianne Laux, and co-editor for Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (2002) with Cheryl Dumesnil.
Also to her credit is the debut novel, Little Beauties, (Simon and Schuster) published in 2005, and a second book, My Dreams Out in the Street in 2007. Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within is due out in February, 2009, and Kim’s fifth collection, Lucifer at the Starlite, will be published by Norton in October.
Kim's awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Poetry Club Medal, the John Clardi Lifetime Achievement Award, a 2000 National Book Award nomination for her third book, Tell Me and a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poem, "Verities," originally published in Poetry magazine, was included in The Best American Poetry 2006, guest-edited by Billy Collins.
She was the founding editor and publisher of the San Francisco literary journal Five Fingers Review. Her website is: www.kimaddonizio.com.
There is great strength in the honesty of Kim Addonizio's writing. She not only takes readers with her, but places them smack dab in the center of thought, feeling, senses, scenario. Her words are unflinching in their ability to communicate the human experience, with remarkable depth and meaning. Note the tenderness and poignancy in this thoughtful and beautiful poem inspired by her daughter.
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Gravity
Carrying my daughter to bed
I remember how light she once was,
no more than a husk in my arms.
There was a time I could not put her down,
so frantic was her crying if I tried
to pry her from me, so I held her
for hours at night, walking up and down the hall,
willing her to fall asleep. She'd grow quiet,
pressed against me, her small being alert
to each sound, the tension in my arms, she'd take
my nipple and gaze up at me,
blinking back fatigue she'd fight whatever terror
waited beyond my body in her dark crib. Now
that she's so heavy I stagger beneath her,
she slips easily from me, down
into her own dreaming. I stand over her bed,
fixed there like a second, dimmer star,
though the stars are not fixed: someone
once carried the weight of my life. |
Kim is equally adept at conveying complex and difficult emotion. In this persona poem, rendering the voice of Jimmy, from Jimmy & Rita, notice how intense and raw the feeling is and how it makes us care:
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Beer. Milk. The Dog. My Old Man.
My old man used to take the dog
out to the garage
where the poker game was
and set down a bowl
of beer, that's the kind of thing
he thought was funny. He used to
give me some too and laugh when I
threw up or fell over
a chair. He taught me to fight
by smacking the side of my head
with his open hand, calling me
a pussy. Don't let them give you
any shit he said. When he smacked
my mother she didn't hit back,
just yelled at him. Once she threw
a glass of milk at his head.
It hit the wall and broke
to pieces on the floor.
I was ten when he died.
Too young to figure it out.
What I thought about was the milk
on the kitchen floor that time,
how they'd both
left it there and gone to bed.
The dog got to it and swallowed glass.
My mother said the dog
just got sick. The milk
evaporated she said.
Meaning it just
went into the air.
I thought how could something
be there and then not. Milk.
The dog. My old man. He loved
a cold beer. Sometimes I'd sit up
at night in the garage and watch
how he drank it, tipping his head
way back, and I'd try to drink mine
exactly the same,
but quietly, so he wouldn't notice
and send me away. |
We see Kim's romantic sensibilities in the next poem of seductive memories full of metaphor and sensuality:
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Stolen Moments
What happened, happened once. So now it's best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge--
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn't last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love's
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours. |
Finally, in The Sound, a sensitive human quality is eloquently conveyed as we are drawn by the author into the experience of hearing not with ears, but by sight.
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The Sound
Marc says the suffering that we don't see
still makes a sort of a sound—a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of—more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it's like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother's resigned sigh
when she sees her. It's like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It's shy, it's barely there. It never stops. |
It is Ms. Addonizio's willingness to breach the surface of experience which makes her words so compelling and brave. Her writing is direct, precise—always real--and allows the reader complete access to the complexities of humanness.
Lark Vernon
January, 2009
A Personal Perspective
By Charles Morrison
Kim Addonizio writes about varied subjects, all studies of the human psyche and the body that binds them. She writes with a stylistic candor which resonates with human experience at every level. The world she writes about is often riddled with conflict and chaos. Aching love, unfulfilled desire, pain, and need, all of which she examines with absolute lack of shielding self. Fearless is the word that comes to mind. The honesty hurts, but you stay close by, ultimately grateful for the shared experience.
Even if you find some of the poems too stark, you're compelled to keep reading them. Kind of like Bukowski. I think that's what initially drew me to reading her. I was just reading random poems off poets.org, read hers, liked what I read and bought her book.
One of my favorite poems is, "What Do Women Want?" The spirit of it captures a lot of what everyone thinks, not just women. I like the freedom of it. The way that she writes it with a feeling of no restraint and, of course, no consequences that she would care about. But I also like the subtle vulnerability and darkness that are within the poem. The last couple of lines are my favorite. The“kiss-off.” I think it sums up the poem with a lot of power.
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“What Do Women Want?”
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm you worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in. |
Ms. Addonizio comes across, in my opinion, as a free spirit. Which, in the case of her style of poetry, is essential. Absolute honesty without fear of any backlash from a society always roiling in chaos.
I love "Mermaid Song." Having a soft spot for my own daughter, I can relate to this one on a personal level. I love the way she captures a scene of her daily life. I can really see it happening. And it's got such a sweetness to it. Unlike some of her other works that often contain a tinge of bitterness like the flavor of a rich, complex coffee…but writing about her daughter adds the sweetener, the real thing, not the artificial kind.
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Mermaid Song
for Aya at fifteen
Damp-haired from the bath, you drape yourself
upside down across the sofa, reading,
one hand idly sunk into a bowl
of crackers, goldfish with smiles stamped on.
I think they are growing gills, swimming
up the sweet air to reach you. Small girl,
my slim miracle, they multiply.
In the black hours when I lie sleepless,
near drowning, dread-heavy, your face
is the bright lure I look for, love's hook
piercing me, hauling me cleanly up. |
“Prayer” is another poem that leaves an impression. Again, it's got love of a different kind. But, the first line is what really gets me here. I'm not sure if she meant it this way or not, but the word "lying" could have another meaning altogether:
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From Prayer
“Sometimes, when we're lying after love,
I look at you and see your body's future
of lying beneath the earth; putting the heel
of my hand against your rib I feel how faint
and far away the heartbeat is.” |
And then there is the music. Always, you can hear her poetic voice emanating from a smoky bar, crooning with sultry blues, or as in the poem below, where sounds add texture and dynamics to the poem. You can see in greater detail through “hearing.”
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From Target
“You can hear what comes back as they speed away:
burst glass or the high ring of struck steel,
or maybe moans. Now you want
to take the thing and hurl it into
the ocean, to wait until it drops down
through the dark and cold and lodges so deep” |
Most writers seem to have the ability to feel more pain, mentally, than other people, and are able to channel that on to paper and share it with the rest of the world. Ms. Addonizio has a great capacity for doing this.
If I had to pick one word to describe her poetry, it would be "honest." Ms. Addonizio's work is authentic because she writes what she knows; it is what draws readers to her work and pulls them back for more.
Pirene’s Fountain interviews Kim Addonizio
With Charles Morrison
Can you tell me a bit about your new book, "Ordinary Genius?"
It’s another guide to writing poetry, like The Poet’s Companion. Writing ideas, some discussions of craft. I hope it will be useful for anyone, from beginners to practicing poets who want inspiration and a few subjects to explore.
Which one of your poems is especially a favorite?
I don’t really have favorites. I usually like the latest one I’ve written, for a day or two. Then the shine comes off and I try to figure out what it needs.
How do you "switch hats" between writing fiction and poetry?
I just go into my closet and root around. The poetry hat fits better, usually, and doesn’t hurt my head so much.
Which poets have influenced your work the most?
Early on, Sharon Olds, Carolyn Forche, C.D. Wright,
and several ancient Chinese poets in Kenneth
Rexroth’s translations. Later, CK Williams. Lately, Dean Young. Everyone I think I've absorbed in some way, but those writers come immediately to mind in terms of style. Influence is a tricky word, really. Whitman, Neruda, the blues--these have also informed my ideas about what I'm trying to do.
What would you like to see happen for the future of poetry?
I don’t have any vision for poetry in general. It’s hard to think in those
terms. I don’t even know if the human race is going to survive, but if it
does, and we don’t all turn into cyborgs—or maybe especially if we do—I think there will be a need for poetry.
Have you ever written any poems you wished had never been published?
Well, I’ve published a few less than stellar poems. But I haven’t lost
sleep thinking about them or anything. They were as good as I could make them at the time. I’m more focused on trying to do something interesting now than on whatever I did in the past.
(We thank Kim Addonizio for permission to publish her work, and appreciate her time and graciousness in response to the interview above.)
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