What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems [Paperback]

Kim Addonizio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2005

Poetry from the author of Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award.

From lilting lines about a love that "dizzies up the brain's back room" to haunting fragments betokening death and decline in a suffering world, Kim Addonizio articulates the ways that our connections—to the world, to self, and to others—endure and help make us whole.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Unashamedly populist, and often charming, Addonizio's fourth book of verse explores the pleasures of sex, the pains of mourning, the efforts of raising a daughter and the difficulties of minor celebrity, setting all her musings and recollections in a style two parts confessional, one part stand-up comedy, and one part talking blues. Addonizio (Tell Me) makes reference both to famous bluesmen (Robert Johnson) and to their repetition-based forms. The first two parts of this five-part collection repeat single subjects as well: first the erotic life (a "31-year-old lover" "stands naked in my bedroom and nothing/ has harmed him yet"), and then the dead ("no real grief left/ for the man who was my father"). Exploring "the way of the world/ the sorrowful versus the happy," the rest of Addonizio's book takes up lighter, more varied subjects, often with a defter hand: "This Poem Wants to Be a Rock and Roll Song So Bad" self-mockingly "captures the essence of today's youth," while "This Poem Is in Recovery" promises "I'm not going to get drunk and take off my clothes/ to sign my book for you." One poem adapts a form from Billy Collins, another responds (by name) to Sharon Olds: others recall the candid representations of (for example) Molly Peacock. Addonizio's in-your-face persona and her avoidance of technical difficulty should help her attract the wide audience she explicitly invites.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Addonizio's poems are like swallows of cold, grassy white wine. They go down easy and then, moments later, you feel the full weight of their impact. Her first collection, Tell Me (2000), was a National Book Award finalist, and any reader who enjoyed her candor and sexiness will find her writing here with even more panache and greater resonance. A smoky-voiced chanteuse, she sings the blues of lost youth and past wildness, protesting the assaults of age, the void left by a grown child and a deceased father, and the sorrows of loved ones battling disease. High heels and hangovers, horror movies and empty hotel rooms, regrets and resignation, elements all in Addonizio's articulation of lust, the quest for oblivion, and the body's unrelenting archiving of every pleasure and pain. For all their fleshiness, stiletto stylishness, and rock-and-roll swagger, Addonizio's finely crafted and irreverent poems are timeless in their inquiries into love and mortality, rife with mystery and ambivalence, and achingly eloquent in their study of the conflictful union of body and soul. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (August 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393327094
• ISBN-13: 978-0393327090
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kim Addonizio is a fiction writer, poet, and teacher. Her poetry collections include Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, What Is This Thing Called Love, and Lucifer at the Starlite. She lives in Oakland, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars another winner from addonizio, February 26, 2004

By 

[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems (Hardcover)

I very excitedly waited for Addonizio's latest collection of poetry to come out, and even though I didn't have the money, I bought it within a couple of weeks of its publication. And I read slowly so that I could savor this collection. Addonizio is a phenomenal poet--probably the best of her generation--a mix of Anne Sexton and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I will admit that this is the weakest of her collections (though it would be hard to top Tell Me and The Philosopher's Club). Even so, it is great work, especially "First Kiss" and "Stolen Moments" which are classic Addonizio. Also of note are "Dear Reader" and "Fever Blues" and "California Street" which is definitely one of the best in the book. She also writes a well done sonnenizio (it's explained in the book) and a very workable paradelle. I can never say enough good about the work of Kim Addonizio, and her latest collection is no exception.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Girlfriend's Guide to Poetry, February 18, 2006

By 

Anna Evans (Hainesport, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems (Paperback)

It is rare to find a modern free verse poet whose work is lucid and yet does not open itself to the accusation of being "prose with linebreaks." Kim Addonizio, however, manages to produce poems which do not sacrifice any clarity and yet remain musical, moving and often surprising. Kim is a poet who somewhat refreshingly writes mostly in complete sentences, but she uses those sentences to go somewhere unusual. In a poem like "Miniatures," which is entirely in complete grammatical sentences, a train of thought is followed through to a huge, unexpected conclusion. In many of her poems, the narrative itself is a metaphor or an allegory.

The poems are grouped into themed sections: Section 1 = Sex, 2 = Death/Sickness/Old Age, 3=Birth/Human Nature, 4 = Decadence, 5 = Writing Poetry/Creation. There are also several formal poems in here, including Kim's own joke form, the sonnenizio, and a paradelle that is better than Billy Collins. But regardless of theme or style, the voice is always Addonizio, that of a wise, tough, sassy older sister or girlfriend. I would recommend these poems to anyone who is disillusioned with reading poetry that is either too superficial or too incomprehensible. I would also recommend these poems to anyone who has never read poetry and does not see its relevance. Read this book: you'll be surprised.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So good., September 21, 2010

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems (Paperback)

Kim Addonizio, What Is This Thing Called Love (Norton, 2004)

I've had a bad run of poetry recently, so it was refreshing to pick up Kim Addonizio's What Is This Thing Called Love and find the best book of poetry I've picked up in the past month. I've been a fan of Addonizio's ever since I first discovered the west coast poets twenty-odd years ago; I hadn't read her in a while, though, and was somewhat concerned the bloom might have come off the lily. How happy I was to be wrong.

"What a relief to discover
that the doctor in my dream
did not exist, that his voice on the phone

and even the phone itself
were only figments, neural parcels
shipped from my brain stem

to my thalamus...."
("And Then I Woke Up")

Lean, tough writing, alternately sexy and horrifying, but of consistently high quality. It's been a lot of years since I first encountered her in Three West Coast Women. If anything, she's only gotten better in the years since. ****