Phoebe Waller-Bridge names American poet Kim Addonizio as one of the writers working today that she admires most; podcast interview with Kim on Planet Poetry, 30 Septe...
Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with the martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and the weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look.
Contents List
NEW POEMS (2015)
13 Lives of the Poets
14 Scrapbook
16 Idioms for Rain
18 Plastic
19 Here Be Dragons
20 Divine
22 Seasonal Affective Disorder
24 Reel
25 Postmodern Romance: Internet Dating
27 Florida
29 Prosody Pathétique
30 Darkening, Then Brightening
31 Pareidolia
32 Party
33 Elegy for Jon
34 White Flower, Red Flower
36 Sleep Stage
38 Dream the Night My Brother Dies
39 Candy Heart Valentine
40 Last Lights
41 Name that Means Holy in Greek
42 The Givens
44 Invisible Signals
from THE PHILOSOPHERS’ CLUB (1994)
47 What the Dead Fear
48 China Camp, CA
49 The Concept of God
50 Full Moon
51 The Call
53 The Philosopher’s Club
55 The Last Poem About the Dead
56 The Sound
57 First Poem for You
58 Them
59 Gravity
60 Beds
from TELL ME (2000)
63 The Numbers
64 Glass
66 Quantum
68 Theodicy
70 Garbage
72 Things That Don’t Happen
75 Night of the Living, Night of the Dead
76 Virgin Spring
78 New Year’s Day
80 Generations
82 Near Heron Lake
83 Collapsing Poem
85 The Divorcee and Gin
86 Intimacy
88 Last Call
89 The Promise
90 The Body In Extremis
91 Rain
92 Tell Me
94 Mermaid Song
95 Onset
96 ‘What Do Women Want?’
97 Good Girl
98 Physics
100 Aliens
101 Like That
103 Prayer
104 One-Night Stands
105 For Desire
106 Flood
from WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE (2004)
108 First Kiss
109 Stolen Moments
110 Blues for Dante Alighieri
111 So What
112 Muse
113 You Don’t Know What Love Is
114 Ex-Boyfriends
116 Death Poem
117 Scary Movies
119 Dead Girls
120 Eating Together
121 Cat Poem
123 February 14
124 It
125 The Way of the World
126 Chicken
128 Lush Life
129 Bad Girl
130 Blues for Robert Johnson
131 Fuck
133 Augury
134 Kisses
from LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE (2009)
137 November 11
139 For You
140 Lucifer at the Starlite
141 Storm Catechism
142 Verities
143 Long-Distance
145 You Were
146 The First Line Is the Deepest
148 Another Day on Earth
149 The Smallest Town Alive
150 The Matter
152 Crossing
153 Weaponry
154 Suite pour les amours perdues
159 In the Lonely Universe
160 Merrily
161 Malice
162 Sui
163 My Heart
164 Semper
165 Shrine
166 News
168 Happiness After Grief
from MY BLACK ANGEL: BLUES POEMS AND PORTRAITS (2014)
170 Cigar Box Banjo
171 Creased Map of the Underworld
173 Guitar Strings
174 Half-Hearted Sonnet
175 Radio Blues
176 Open Mic
178 Heraclitean
179 Queen of the Game
180 Harmonica
181 Please
182 Penis Blues
184 Spell Against Impermanence
185 Black Snake Blues
186 Northeast Corridor Blues
187 When Joe Filisko Plays the Blues
190 Salvation
190 The Women
192 Wine Tasting
Related Audio
Kim Addonizio talks to Maurice Riordan, Editor of The Poetry Review, about riffing on the canon and traditional forms, her view that 'emotional experience is the essence of any art' and how 'the best humour is also dark and traffics with something else' – how she uses poetry as a process of discovery. She also reads her poem 'White Flower, Red Flower' from Wild Nights.
