Crossing a Parallel UniverseKay DayAmerican poetry at the moment works on a level that doesn't allow it to penetrate mainstream America. Every now and then we'll hear a poem on television, usually a personal tribute to a loved one. Educational television networks offer some programming that features poets. But by and large, a man on the street probably couldn't name ten American poets if you threatened to hit him on the head with the latest Norton's. Canadian columnist Philip Marchand blames the poets for this sorry turn. With poetry fractured by manifestations like slam poetry, magnetic poetry, and personal poetry, as well as the many schools of verse within literary poetry, not to mention conflicts between new formalists and open form proponents, well, it makes sense that a person might view the genre as a bit tilted. Yet distinct voices can still be heard, and some of those voices write poetry that offers integrity in craftsmanship and linear flow that doesn't read like a whodunnit. Kim Addonizio, a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry, brings accessibility coupled with great depth in capability to the genre T. S. Eliot described as, "the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings." Addonizio grounds much of her poetry in personal experience and cultural heritage, a school often casually referred to as "confessional." In an interview with San Francisco Arts Magazine's, Jessica Belle Smith, Addonizio clarified the term misused by many by explaining what it does not mean, as in, "untransformed, raw, narcissistic self-expression." A commendable example of what the term does mean can be found by exploring her poem, "Therapy," from Tell Me, the 2000 NBA finalist. Set as a sonnet, the poem tops out a backdrop of childhood trauma by describing a brother in the house who, "drags me by one arm across the floor." The persona in the poem is addressing a therapist whose voice is mute, and in fourteen lines, winds its way to a compelling close in the form of a couplet that speaks to ordering the "noise of the past." The poem asks, "What's it for?" Ten words in the last line of a skillfully handled form, complete with rhyme and regular meter, project the poem outward to a wry place recognized by anyone who has seen or experienced psychological analysis, thus merging the personas of both analyst and reader. "Times up," the iambs pound, "You're in the house. I'm through the door." This poem offers an excellent example of the sonnet's scope and projectorial abilities. Incorporating hard, single syllable words, the poem depends on a strident tone and pace. Delicacies like the description of a small bird who, "thrums its wings," demonstrate the talent behind the pen. The beauty in such a poem resides in a simple universe. Even if a reader has no idea what iambic pentameter means, and has never spoken the words, "English sonnet," the technical skill that supports Addonizio's poem enables most anyone to read and appreciate it. A great portion of Addonizio's work also comprises free verse. Spend some time reading her, and it becomes evident that she's an expansive, daring writer, open to options. A recent entry in her online writing journal, Writing Life, explains, "The more I write, the more ambitious I become. No, not to have a bestselling novel. I just want to do it better." Whether writing poetry or fiction, Addonizio is a consummate word artist. Yet even an accomplished poet needs a sounding board. "I think editorial feedback is useful to every writer, whatever his or her level," she says. She sends her own work for critique to a few trusted readers who are also writers, and says, "We're very honest about what doesn't fly." She also experiences the same pain any writer feels when told something isn't working as it should. She admits, "I think the resistance to hearing something isn't working comes from a place of fear, a place that says, I can't do it any better." She believes that fear and a desire for instant approval are, she says, "obstacles to the creative process, that asks we go deeper, that we get past ego, that we work and maybe suffer and undergo change in order to reach some other place...where the work of art resides." For her, that understanding separates the artist from the dilettante, and the hobbyist. Kim Addonizio partnered with Cheryl Dumesnil on her latest book, Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers and Writers on Tattoos. Ironically, body art has done what poetry hasn't--painted itself onto the mainstream American canvas. The introduction to the new collection acknowledges Dorothy Parker's star tattoo, "permanently inked on her elbow," as the inspiration for the title. Works by Ray Bradbury, Mark Doty, Rick Moody, and Flannery O'Conner are included, along with work from a prisoner, a private investigator, tattoo artists, and others. According to the press release, "These stories, poems, and memoirs span the range of human experience, from the awesome to the absurd." Addonizio says she and her co-editor were talking about how, "behind every tattoo, there's a story, and it went from there." She says tattooing offers a, "sort of lens through which you can observe an incredibly wide range of human experience." She says a tattoo is the place, "where imagination meets the physical, the skin, and lodges there." Despite her success, Addonizio wrote in her online journal that receiving rejections can still sting. She's learned to shrug it off, and projects a generous attitude towards a literary establishment that, at times, seems to make no sense. Despite her accolades, her work is not included in The Best American Poetry, 2002. Asked about it, she quips, "Maybe that anthology should be called, 'Some Poems Published this Year that Our Distinguished Editor Really Liked." She adds, "Like with any selection, it can be quarreled with. I like the title of the anthology Garrison Keillor just put together, Good Poems." Kim Addonizio has produced an impressive body of work--several collections of poetry, a collection of stories, a book on writing poetry, and now the tattoo collection. She's received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and won both a Pushcart Prize and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. She is among the most accessible literary writers, with a multi-layered Net site that even includes her email address. Her poetry, though carefully grounded in scholarship, delivers an experience that can be appreciated on many levels. Hopefully, her latest book will offer more exposure for a writer who deserves it, and one who can bridge the parallel universe that so many writers dwell in. On poetry, Addonizio says, "Yeah, parallel universe is a good way to describe it--with these fascinating intersections, like when a door opens between dimensions, and before it closes, a few people slip back and forth, and things get shaken up a little."
Dorothy Parker's Elbow:
Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos |
Kay Day