{"id":136,"date":"2017-02-05T18:42:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T18:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devfloridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&amp;p=136"},"modified":"2017-02-05T18:42:41","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T18:42:41","slug":"mortal-words","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortal Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Bukowski in a Sundress<\/em>, by Kim Addonizio<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Penguin, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>224 pages, paper, $16.00<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Mortal Trash<\/em>, by Kim Addonizio<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>W.W. Norton, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>112 pages, hardcover, $25.95<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dissatisfied with the label \u201cconfessional poet,\u201d Kim Addonizio nonetheless owns up to it in the pages of <em>Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life<\/em> (Penguin, 2016). \u201cI hope you will forgive me,\u201d she deadpans partway through this funny, lyrical, moving set of essays. \u201cI can\u2019t seem to stop telling you everything about me in the lineated memoir of my life.\u201d Poetry, that \u201clineated memoir,\u201d serves as but one topic here, from the satirical \u201cHow to Succeed in Po Biz\u201d (\u201cIt is crucial not to win the major award, because then you might feel too great a sense of achievement. Be a finalist, but not a winner\u201d) to the candid \u201cHow I Write.\u201d \u201cEach time, I\u2019m lost,\u201d she admits. \u201cEach time, I wish I hadn\u2019t started down this road.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Other essays here similarly de-romanticize Addonizio\u2019s writing life without diminishing its psychic and emotional rewards. She recalls a revelatory moment in childhood, being \u201churled into tumultuous confusion about the true nature of reality\u201d when she saw how the ordinary word <em>bologna <\/em>was spelled: \u201cClearly,\u201d she writes, \u201cthere were deeper truths than I realized lurking beneath not only language, but existence itself\u201d(\u201cBest Words, Best Order\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>With characteristic humor, Addonizio goes on to credit another word, <em>libido<\/em>\u2014part of a rhyme scrawled anonymously on a schoolyard wall\u2014with inspiring her lifelong twin obsessions, eros and language. One of the sharpest essays here, \u201cThe Process,\u201d begins as an anodyne craft talk to MFA writing students\u2014the title itself a workshop shibboleth\u2014but after nodding to such writing-program proprieties as \u201cinspiration\u201d and \u201crevision\u201d Addonizio throws down the gauntlet: \u201cmaybe what you really need to learn is something else, like how to write a decent English sentence.\u201d Addonizio practices what she preaches. The writing throughout <em>Bukowski in a Sundress<\/em> is vivid and memorable, the sentences bristling or sinuous as the need arises, qualities readers of her poems have come to expect. Indeed, some passages here have the intensity as well as the verve and wit of Addonizio\u2019s best poetry:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>We shelled peanuts from a red plastic basket and sat together\nthrough the late afternoon as the sun lowered itself gradually\nover the docks and the boats like a shining woman lowering herself\ninto a very large, sparkling bathtub. Or maybe like a shooting star\non heroin. Or maybe the sun was more of a golden quaalude, slipping\ndown the darkening blue throat of the day.\n(\u201cAre You Insane?\u201d)<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As in her poems, Addonizio\u2019s essay topics range from the quotidian to the tragic: not only flu shots, cocktails, and \u201cHow to Fall for a Younger Man,\u201d but also emotionally disturbed family members, single parenthood, and her mother\u2019s battle with Parkinson\u2019s Disease. Along the way we find plenty to laugh over as well as ponder, from the indignities of online dating to the smarminess of literary critics. (Her book\u2019s title, originally a reviewer\u2019s jibe, is a label Addonizio gleefully accepts.) Such acceptance is necessary to the confessional mode. \u201cI confess to happiness,\u201d she writes. \u201cI confess to grief.\u201d Far from mere rationalizing or hoping to atone for admitted missteps, and just as far from self-congratulation, Addonizio\u2019s dispatches \u201cfrom the writing life\u201d make clear the emotional ballast such a life requires even as they distinguish one\u2019s art from one\u2019s lived experience: \u201cI confess that a kelson of my creations is love. The poems are not the life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This kelson of love turns out to be a preoccupation in <em>Mortal Trash <\/em>(W.W. Norton, 2016), Addonizio\u2019s latest collection of poems, published nearly simultaneously with <em>Bukowski in a Sundress<\/em>. More particularly, she is interested in the ways love has so often been poetically construed or codified: Addonizio devotes major sections of the book to revisions of, or responses to, poems by Shakespeare, John Donne, and others. Her tweaking of a famous image or line can honor the original love poem while also addressing the realities of contemporary relationships. Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 18 (\u201cShall I compare thee to a summer\u2019s day?\u201d) looms dauntingly over the lover\u2019s complaint in Addonizio\u2019s poem: \u201cI couldn\u2019t compare this to anything \/ I\u2019m not going to talk about it now.\u201d The speaker laments the miles separating lovers, but just when we think she has achieved some aesthetic, ironic detachment with a joke about remedying the situation (\u201cevery airline fare sometimes declines\u201d), Addonizio reminds us that\u2014the Bard notwithstanding\u2014poetry in fact is no match for Time: \u201cDeath still has bragging rights \/ this line has stopped breathing.\u201d The omission of conventional punctuation from the poems in this section furthers the sense of dislocation, unmooring us from the Shakespearean original just far enough. We hear it echoed and renewed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Mortal Trash<\/em> trades in such re-workings and reappraisals of poetry\u2019s means, its metaphors and imaginings. As in her prose \u201cconfessions,\u201d Addonizio often satirizes her chosen art both to refresh it and to suggest its continuing relevance. \u201c[L]et me not to the pediment of two minds \/ admit marriage,\u201d a speaker quips in a tweaking of Sonnet 116, the line break here providing an extra satiric bite to the reversal of Shakespeare\u2019s syntax.\u00a0 The substitution of \u201cpediment\u201d for \u201cimpediment\u201d is crucial, the barrier to love in the original reduced to what may be merely a fa\u00e7ade of love in Addonizio\u2019s version.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One of the pleasures of Addonizio\u2019s verse is this kind of darkly comic turn, this jab of rueful insight. \u201cPlastic\u201d begins with a grim environmental fact that \u201ctrashes,\u201d so to speak, the hackneyed language of love:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>A bunch of it is floating somewhere\nway out in the Pacific.\nIf your love is deeper than the ocean,\nthen the surface of your love is a swirl\nof swill, toothbrushes and swizzle sticks\ncarried by the inevitable current\u2026<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Skeptical as they may be of conventional tropes, we shouldn\u2019t overlook that these lines make for wonderful poetry themselves, the vivid image of consumer detritus washing in on the tide of those \u201cs\u201d sounds: <em>surface, swirl, swill, swizzle<\/em>\u2026 Likewise the lines that conclude \u201cElegy for Jon\u201d:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>I wish the sea would stop\nswallowing his name, while it goes on\nkissing the sand, laying\nanother cold wreath at my feet.<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The swish of the sea is conveyed in those s\u2019s, the low vowels (<em>stop<\/em> and <em>swallow<\/em> and <em>on<\/em>, <em>goes<\/em> and <em>cold<\/em>) competing with the high, bright e\u2019s in <em>sea<\/em> and <em>wreath<\/em> and <em>feet<\/em> as if to mimic the internalized tones of grief, a shifting between dirge and keen.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, nearly every page in <em>Mortal Trash<\/em> yields its metaphorical and acoustic riches. In \u201cDivine\u201d we see \u201cblack trees \/ hung with sleeping bats \/ like ugly Christmas ornaments.\u201d Another poem offers \u201cthe ROYGBIV\u201d of damp bras laid out to dry. Elsewhere we watch \u201cthis slut of a river smear kisses all over \/ east Manhattan. \u201cCharting the emotions, the \u201cmortal trash\u201d that is the heart, remains Addonizio\u2019s primary concern throughout the volume, but this creative \u201ckelson\u201d of love in her work merges with her gimlet-eyed retooling of tradition at several key points. Perhaps the best example, \u201cHere Be Dragons,\u201d reads as both a map of love\u2019s perils and a kind of <em>ars poetica<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m not done with the compass \/ &amp; I\u2019m still puzzling over the chart,\u201d her speaker begins, then admits to being drawn to the outlandish, even the dangerous. This holds true emotionally (sea monsters and sirens \u201cwere my lovers\u201d and \u201cwhat dragged me down\u201d) as well as artistically, the poem concluding with the refreshing brashness we hear throughout both this collection and her book of essays:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>I drank\nin the taverns with pirates howler\nmonkeys my sea captain ancestors my\nsozzled staggering fathers &amp; returned\nbut not to any harbor only the curved\nsurface I sailed on<\/pre>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If \u201cconfessional,\u201d these two books rise above both the typical memoir\u2019s tendency to capitalize on addiction or dysfunction and much of contemporary poetry\u2019s self-defeating rage against coherence. <em>Bukowski in a Sundress<\/em> treats with candor as well as mordant humor the travails of not only \u201cthe writing life\u201d but life, period\u2014this existence we nevertheless are stuck with, and which Addonizio\u2019s poems renew our passion for, mortality in all its awkward, exasperating, despairing, and joyous \u201ctrash.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kim Addonizio&#8217;s Bukowski in a Sundress and Mortal Trash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":138,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mortal Words - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mortal Words - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kim Addonizio&#039;s Bukowski in a Sundress and Mortal Trash.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/02\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"487\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"735\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/\",\"name\":\"Mortal Words - The Florida Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2017\\\/02\\\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-02-05T18:42:41+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2017\\\/02\\\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2017\\\/02\\\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg\",\"width\":487,\"height\":735},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/mortal-words\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Mortal Words\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Florida Review\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mortal Words - The Florida Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mortal Words - The Florida Review","og_description":"Kim Addonizio's Bukowski in a Sundress and Mortal Trash.","og_url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/","og_site_name":"The Florida Review","og_image":[{"width":487,"height":735,"url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/02\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/","name":"Mortal Words - The Florida Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/02\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg","datePublished":"2017-02-05T18:42:41+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/02\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2017\/02\/Addonizio-Kim-Mortal-Trash-cover.jpg","width":487,"height":735},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/mortal-words\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mortal Words"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/","name":"The Florida Review","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}