Kim Addonizio

Poetry from the author of Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award. From lilting lines about a love that "dizzies up the brain's back room" to haunting fragments betokening death and decline in a suffering world, Kim Addonizio articulates the ways that our connections—to the world, to self, and to others—endure and help make us whole.

What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems

Dorianne Laux

Explains the process of writing poetry, including what subjects to use, how to overcome writer's block, tips on getting published, and offers writing exercises

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry

Poems of loneliness and late nights, liquor and loss.

Poems

Tell Me

Through a collection of personal essays, poet provocateur Kim Addonizio chronicles the joys and indignities in the life of a writer coasting through middle age. She vividly captures moments of inspiration at the writing desk (or bed) and adventures on the road - from sparsely attended readings at small Midwestern colleges to wine-fuelled one-night stands at publishing conferences. Addonizio's crackling wit and colorful prose bring unforgettable life to her words, producing is a memoir that radiates all the wit, heartbreak and sexy grittiness her fans love.

Confessions from a Writing Life

Bukowski in a Sundress

poems

Mortal trash

In this fresh approach to writing poetry, the coauthor of the perennially popular The Poet's Companion offers sharp insights into the craft of writing. "The creative process is just that," maintains Kim Addonizio. "Not a means to an end, but an ongoing participation." A widely acclaimed poet and finalist for the National Book Award, Addonizio meditates on her own process as she encourages writers to explore both their personal and political worlds, to seek inspiration from poets new and old, and to discover the rich poetic resources of the Internet. Lively, accessible, and informative, Ordinary Genius?provides wisdom gleaned through personal experience and offers a heady variety of writing exercises. Chapters on gender, addiction, race and class, metaphor and line invite each individual writer to find and to hone his or her unique voice. This is the perfect book for both experienced writers and beginners eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.

Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

A dark, no-holds-barred, and often hilarious collection from a prize-winning poet, veering between the poles of self and world.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

A lyrically intense collection by the author of Ordinary Genius explores the author's perspectives on a duality of nature that enables juxtapositions of dark and light, good and evil, and suffering and joy, a volume that considers topics ranging from the war in Iraq to the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Lucifer at the Starlite

Kim Addonizio's poetry is renowned both for its gritty, street-wise narrators and its wicked sense of wit. With passion, precision and irreverent honesty, this collection further explores life's dual nature - good and evil, light and dark, joy and suffering - exposing the raw emotions often only visible when truly confronting ourselves.

New & Selected Poems

Wild Nights

Passionate and irreverent, Mortal Trash transports the readers into a world of wit, lament, and desire. In a section called Over the Bright and Darkened Lands, canonical poems are torqued into new shapes. Except Thou Ravish Me, reimagines John Donne s famous Batter my heart, Three-person d God as told from the perspective of a victim of domestic violence. Like Pablo Neruda, Addonizio hears a swarm of objects that call without being answered: hospital crash carts, lawn gnomes, Evian bottles, wind-up Christmas creches, edible panties, cracked mirrors. Whether comic, elegiac, or ironic, the poems in Mortal Trash remind us of the beauty and absurdity of our time on earth. From Scrapbook: We believe in the one-ton ros and the displaced toilet equally. Our blue assume you understan not much, and try to be alive, just as we do and that it may be helpful to hold the han of someone as lost as you "

Mortal Trash

In this collection, gifted poet and novelist Kim Addonizio uses her literary powers to bring to life a variety of settings, all connected through the suggestion that things in the known world are not what they seem. In "Beautiful Lady of the Snow," young Annabelle turns to a host of family pets to combat the alienation she feels caught between her distracted mother and ailing grandfather; in "Night Owls," a young college student's crush on her acting partner is complicated by the bloodlust of being half-vampire; in "Cancer Poems," a dying woman turns to a poetry workshop to make sense of her terminal diagnosis and final days; in "Intuition," a young girl's sexual forays bring her closer to her best friend's father; and in the collection's title story, a photographer looks back to his youth spent as a young illusionist under the big tent and his obsessive affair with the carnival owner's wife. Distracted parents, first love, the twin forces of alienation and isolation: the characters in The Palace of Illusions all must contend with these challenges, trafficking in the fault lines between the real and the imaginary, often in a world not of their making. The stories in this collection have appeared in journals ranging from Narrative Magazine to The Fairy Tale Review, and include the much loved "Ever After," which was featured on NPR's "Selected Shorts."

Stories

The Palace of Illusions

Struggling with her divorce and an alcoholic mother while working at a Long Beach baby store, former child pageant contender Diana McBride becomes involved with a pregnant teen who wants to give her baby up for adoption.

A Novel

Little Beauties

A dark, no-holds-barred, and often hilarious collection from a prize-winning poet, veering between the poles of self and world. Kim Addonizio’s sharp and irreverent eighth volume, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, is an essential companion to your practice of the Finnish art of kalsarikännit—drinking at home, alone in your underwear, with no intention of going out. Imbued with the poet’s characteristic precision and passion, the collection charts a hazardous course through heartache, climate change, dental work, Outlander, semiotics, and more. Combatting existential gloom with a wicked, seductive energy, Addonizio investigates desire, loss, and the madness of contemporary life. She calls out to Walt Whitman and John Keats, echoes Dorothy Parker, and finds sisterhood with Virginia Woolf. Sometimes confessional, sometimes philosophical, these poems weave from desolation to drollery and clamor with raucous imagery: an insect in high heels, a wolf at an uncomfortable party, a glowing and self-serious guitar. A poet whose “voice lifts from the page, alive and biting” (Sky Sanchez, San Francisco Book Review), Addonizio reminds her reader, "if you think nothing & / no one can / listen I love you joy is coming."

Now We're Getting Somewhere: Poems

Jack Zipes

Francine Prose

Norman Lock

Donna Tartt

Aimee Bender

Kate Bernheimer

Joshua Beckman

Matthew Rohrer

Mary Caponegro

Julie Choffel

Monica Fambrough

Sarah Hannah

Brent Hendricks

Stacey Richter

Marjorie Sandor

Kiki Smith

Sarah Veglahn

Wendy Weitman

Contains poetry, fiction, and essays that either address the abiding influence of fairy tales on contemporary literature and culture, or are themselves contemporary fairy tales in prose or verse.

The Blue Issue

Fairy Tale Review

The lives of three characters -- an obsessive-compulsive, a pregnant teenager, and the teen's unborn child -- come together in National Book Award finalist and Pushcart Prize winner Kim Addonizio's unsparingly funny and transcendent debut novel. Diana McBride, a thirty-four-year-old former child pageant contender, now works in a baby store in Long Beach. Between dealing with a catastrophic haircut, the failure of her marriage, and phone calls from her alcoholic mother, Diana has gone off her OCD medication and is trying to cope via washing and cleaning rituals. When pregnant teenager Jamie Ramirez enters the store, Diana's already chaotic world is sent spinning. Jamie can't stand being pregnant. She can't wait to get on with her normal life and give the baby up for adoption. But her yet-to-be-born daughter, Stella, has a fierce will and a destiny to fulfill. And as the magical plot of Little Beauties unfolds, these three characters' lives become linked in ever more surprising ways. With a poet's ear for fresh, evocative language and a deft humor that exposes her characters' foibles, Addonizio perfectly captures the messiness and unexpected beauty of life.

Cheryl Dumesnil

Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos

Dorothy Parker's Elbow

Poems explore themes of love and loss, and the complex relationships between parents and children, siblings, friends, and lovers.

These gutsy post-feminist urban tales present characters teetering on the edge. The bizarre and unrestrained stories include uncaring and absent lovers, lifestyles of overzealous drinking and smoking, and overwhelming feelings of loneliness.

Kim Addonizio

Books

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