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Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio

Source: GBF
Paperback, 96 pgs.
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Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is a collection that you can hold close in your shelter-in-place during the pandemic and know that anything that happens behind closed doors is just kalsarikdnnit, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t shut the world out and ignore our problems. Opening with “Night in the Castle,” the narrator has already given up on mercy long ago. The poet infuses this poem with injustice, privilege, and anger, recalling the clashing armies of history and the bleakness of regicide.

The poet is calling our attention to the darkness of humanity, from our clashes among ourselves and the destruction that results to the changing climate we’ve had a hand in expediting. “The earth is about used up/like a sodden tampon & no place to throw it away/” (pg. 14) and “Even the ocean is gasping for air/” (pg. 15), but these are things we already know, yet we are too complacent, too privileged to see that action is required. However, many of us feel as the narrator does in “In bed” that it is all to enormous to tackle head on or deal with daily, we’d rather just put our heads under the covers and ignore it all. We want a hibernation from the ugliness of the world.

But don’t assume that the collection is all doom and gloom, though the humor is a bit dark. My father would definitely appreciate her humor in Résumé:

Résumé 

Families shame you;
Rehab's a scam;
Lovers drain you
And don't give a damn.
Friends are distracted;
Aging stinks;
You'll soon be subtracted;
You might as well drink.

As a writer, I absolutely appreciated the third section of this collection – “Confessional Poetry” — in which writing is compared to “firing a nail gun into the center of a vanity mirror” (pg. 41) or “like sewing rhinestones on your traumas” and “wearing them” at a “pain festival” (pg. 42)

I really like feeling something when I stagger into a poem
& having a place to lie down & cry

Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is as much of an introspective emotional and existential journey as it is a confession that we are no where near perfect human beings. We all have a lot of work to do emotionally, spiritually, and philosophically, but as we struggle with these internal paradigms, we’re also watching the world suffer around us and degrade. How do we break through the malaise and paralysis to make progress with ourselves and the world? Perhaps by being less serious about everything, allowing ourselves to fall apart, and taking action that makes actual progress as opposed to the actions that people deem as “making progress.”

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Sandra Beasley, Katherine E. Young, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the 2021 Gaithersburg Book Festival:

Comments

  1. This sounds like my kind of poetry book LOL! Thanks for sharing.