Customer Reviews

Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems

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Kim Addonizio writes poetry stripped of pretension and fussy sterility. Her poems live in the streets, hang out with questionable characters, and could beat up most other poems without breaking a sweat. Her latest collection moves away from the tortured relationship poems of her earlier collection and lets in more of the world at large. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bubble beneath the surface of these witty, sometimes painful pieces. Addonizio deserves a wide readership.

This is a classic example of this authors poetry. Absoloutly love this book; every time I read it I find a new favorite!

Kim Addonizio likes a declarative line, & one of the great pleasures in reading LUCIFER AT STARLITE, her latest collection of poems, is to see her bring that line to its sharpest focus, while losing none of her free-swinging American swagger. A number of witty standouts (oh say, "Yes," "You," "Forms of Love," "The Matter") works as strings of brief sentences. Lines can play smart tricks on each other, as in:
"Some men aren't content with mere breakage, they've got to burn you to the ground.
Some men you've reduced to ashes are finally dusting themselves off."
But whatever the interplay between pieces, such poems always amount to a whole; they arrive at a hardboiled wisdom -- hardboiled, & then diced & mixed with mayo & celery & served on chewy rye. I mean that, even when Addonizio turns reflective & serious during LUCIFER's final section, as in "God Ode" or "In the Evening" (a lovely & hurting meditation on taking care of an aging mother), she never strays into the precious. She never betrays the brass-in-pocket worldliness of the woman who seems a model for her, namely, Dorothy Parker. Nonetheless, in LUCIFER this poem's disappointed toughness allows room for a lot of the larger world, more than ever in her career. The opener, "November 11th," riffs side-of-the-mouth & street-smart on all the day's dead, then loses some of its lightheartedness as it meditates on Iraqi & American dead, then abruptly arrives at a loss more chilling because more close to home:
"I almost forgot my neighbor's niece, 16 and puking
in Kaiser Emergency, the cause a big mystery
until the autopsy -- toxic shock syndrome,
of all things -- I thought that was history, too,
but I guess girls are still dying; who knew! I run..."
That "who knew!" & "I run," tying the tragedy back into the everyday, accords the verse the balance that's so winning throughout; it bears up the unbearable. So too Addonizio's witty catalogues of romantic breakups & mental breakdowns (& bodily breakdowns as well, like that mother's) never come free of their heartache. "Verities" may toy with the delicious cracked syntax of Paul Muldoon, but it includes "Sticks & stones will break you," & concludes with "The darkest hour comes." Then there are the names of the book's sections -- 4 sections, an arrangement that contributed to the sneaking, satisfying balance -- 1) "Happy Hour," 2) "Jukebox," 3) "Dance Floor," & 4) "I Am Going to Have to Take Your Keys." LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE is a great night out, all the greater for the hangover it leaves burning in our reawakened nerves.