Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40397 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 90 pages

From Publishers Weekly
It is not surprising that each of Laux's and Addonizio's third collections of poems are being published in close proximity by the same house. In 1997 the pair coauthored The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (Norton); both have published two previous collections with BOA; both use candid and unsentimental personal history as a prime subject matter; and both have stronger work in earlier collections. Many of Addonizio's (Jimmy & Rita) straight-talk poems in Tell Me, dedicated to Laux, depict honest characters who are in the destructive, but often unrevealing, clutches of hard-drinking, doomed relationships, and all manner of problems that subsequently arise. Some of the poems raise the question of what happens when you risk emotional honesty and it doesn't work: in "The Divorcee and Gin," she writes, "God, I love/ what you do to me at night when we're alone,/ how you wait for me to take you into me/ until I'm so confused with you I can't/ stand up anymore." The situations are often compelling, and the performancelike language lends them an air of melodrama that many be intentional, but they don't really rise above the status of well-lineated memoir. The largely domestic and narrative poems of Laux's Smoke shift between internal and external landscapes in a manner that at moments recalls early Richard Hugo: "Somewhere/ a Dumpster is ratcheted open by the claws/ of a black machine. All down the block/ something inside you opens and shuts." Her strongest work here achieves a solid music by using direct address in poems such as "Books" and "The Shipfitter's Wife." Yet the plainspoken approach, aiming at understatement, often specifies too little, letting emotional nuance go unarticulated. While both poets may work in parallel registers, the effect of each is distinct. Unfortunately, many poems in both books do not quite locate the seemingly powerful places that generate the work. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Told in the cracked, smoky voice of someone who has loved and lost a lot and has come out the stronger for it these poems by the author of The Philosopher's Club and Jimmy & Rita crackle with energy yet do not betray the slightest slackening of craft. Addonizio moves from bars to caf?s to one-night stands and back to bars singing a sophisticated version of the blues. She may wonder "who has the time for anything/ but their own pleasures and sorrows," but her work never succumbs to melancholy.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Form and Narrative Hit the Streets
This book is a marvelous tonic for those who denigrate the contemporary use of traditional form and storytelling in poems. Old fashioned? Out of date? Read this book and Wake Up! Smart, sassy, funny, sexy, tender and bold, these poems give us the news of a wild, humane world that I, for one, am delighted to wake up living in. In a world of so many poet-phonies, Addonizio is grounded. Her poems are the real deal.

Straightforward, solid poems
Addonizio uses a conversational linguistic strategy. Her work is exceedingly accessible and clear. She uses a personal authority to make broad statements about contemporary life, but is not confessional.

One senses that her best work is yet to come, but that Tell Me will be a popular collection. I enjoyed this volume and (full disclosure) have worked briefly with the author.

Raw and real
I read this book for an independent study in women's sexuality. This book of poetry has a section titled "Good Girl" in which a number of poems specifically address femininity and female sexuality including What Do Women Want, Good Girl, Physics, and One-Night Stands. Addonizio uses vivid and often stark imagery to depict important female moments, like single motherhood and meaningless sexual encounters. Few other poets deal with issues so central to female identity with as much blunt force as Addonizio does in this book.

Also, on a side note, she is a very kind woman who, when I asked if I could put excerpts from her book onto my independent study blog said that no one should ever have to ask to write about poetry. This is a real book with real emotions about a real woman. It is not always lyrical but it is rich with "woman." I was glad to have read this.