The poetry of Kim Addonizio

I have some thoughts about the poetry of Kim Addonizio. Her poetry is very shocking for the first time and the coarse words she uses surprised me, not to mention that she is capable of speaking about her sexual partners and her sex and night life in such an overt manner. (I do not know if she can still be ranked among the confessionalists or not).
In “One-Night Stands” we have a really very unusual and shocking beginning, relating her sexual habits while being drunk. We can imagine ourselves being in a bar with her, looking at her when she finally manages to find a partner for that night whom she will never see again in her life. She overtly says that
“These are people we’re meant
to lose, moments that rinse off.”
The last line is surprising however, she asks for love although she never wants to see her lover again. Maybe under the surface of a woman without emotions, she is full of love, full of passion, and she does not really want to be together with someone else every night and she is looking for a durable relationship.
Unfortunately, a long-lasting relationship may have many problems and conflicts and sometimes we are not able to find solutions to them. If we read the poem entitled “Collapsing Poem”, we can see the “side-effects” of being together with somebody. The sobbing and drunk woman outside and the man inside cannot find the point in their life and cannot really imagine why they are still together or how could they love each other in the past. By now, they do not have what to speak about “given the lack of context, given your own failures”. This must be the saddest moment in a marriage which is supposed to last forever and was concluded in the presence of God. Finally, she gets in, but instead of making up with her husband, she begins to hit him. This is the point when the poet addresses herself to the reader, evoking “pity and fear” among the audience and she asks us to take her away as soon as possible. So she runs away from constant relationships and from one-night relationships as well. What is the solution then? Being alone? No, we all know that anything is better than be alone.
We can also leave our existing partner; “Leaving Song” is about that. In it, the poet says goodbye to his lover, evoking some images of their past life. How they used to lie together, how he curled away her in sleep, the quick kisses and the drinks. Here drinking a lot, as a recurrent motif, comes back. She describes the process of how they became totally drunk. She admits she liked this situation as well, because he said such things he could not have said sober. She is constantly saying goodbye, and, as the symbols of drunkenness and alcoholism, the drained bottles appear which he should line up. She seems to quit forever and never wants to go back. That is why this is the leaving song.