One stood among the violetslistening to a bird. One went to the toilet and was struck by the moon. One felt hopelessuntil a trumpet crash, and then lo,he became a diamond. I have a shovel.Can I turn it into a poem? On my stoveI'm boiling some milk thistle. I hope it will turn into a winged thesisbefore you stop reading. Look, I'm topless!Listen: approaching hooves!One drowned in a swimming pool.One removed his shoesand yearned off a bridge. One liveswith Alzheimer's in a state facility, spittlei...

Accursed you will feel, it will grow and at last you will know that Kim Addonizio has followed time worn form in her drive towards mediocrity, the tell tale signs are everywhere; the great, thick hedgerows of verbiage quite ring the reader, your mind and they swallow whole pages and pages, you will be soaked by a thunderstorm of adjectives that cloyingly leach through your unwary mind and on you go through the muck where incidental, inanimate objects are endlessly presented weighed down and trit...

I bought this a few years back and never really got to it until today as I was cleaning my bookshelf. I bought it because I buy any poetry collection by this author. I started doing this post-college, after my poetry teacher told me she could hear the sounds of this author in my own work. This set was witty and funny, and my favorites include: Party, Internet Dating, Here Be Dragons, 57, and Eulogy.

Bummer, I usually like her. Hard to get behind "Now there were two of you, / or maybe one, mashed back together / like sandwich halves, / oozing mayonnaise."

SECOND READ:I stand by first review. The best stuff in the collection is the work that harkens back to the more confessional style she utilized in collections like Tell Me and What Is This Thing Called Love. That said, there are some very interesting moments in the more experimental material. A solid recommend.FIRST READ:Addonizio's latest collection of poetry is a strong addition to her body of work. Balancing the personal and universal, Addonizio explores love, lust, and mortality. She also pl...

Maybe I've read too much Kim Addonizio in too short a span of time, but I was really impatient with a lot of this. It seemed both callow and full of depressing stuff about aging, and I was left thinking uncharitable thoughts about what happens when the girl who's always dancing on the bar is eventually forced, by sheer dint of the decades passing, to grow up. The "sonnets" section felt gimmicky to me, and her attempts to mimic (pay homage to?) e.e. cummings were kind of painful. It wasn't until

not quite 5 star for me but some really cool/clever lines in this book much better than a majority of the poetry i've read not pretentious feeling at all which is refreshing

OVER THE BRIGHT AND DARKENED LANDSI sit in one of the dives.I feel kind of dizzy.October 29, 2009.In Peshawar, the shoppers drop.Explosives in a carexplode kidsand their mothersin Meena Bazaar.The bottles look pretty, lit uplike a glass pyre.There’s an olive in my higher power.The jukebox is haunted.I brandish my glass.Smoke stinks in my hair.We must fuck one another.BUT HAVE NOT LOVEIf I lick men, and angels,they will take me to dinner.The bells bang all winter.Angels are picky eaters.They don’...

I thought the book was uneven. Just my preferences, but I find disappointed sex poems boring now. Also, I don't usually enjoy abstract poetry. On the other hand, there were a number of powerful pieces here: Idioms for Rain, Party, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Reel, Name That Means Holy in Greek, for instance.

Addonizio is as passionate and irrelevant as always with a bit more piss, vinegar, and melancholy than in earlier collections. Addonizio's work here is always witty but sometimes moves from the profound to callow. I did enjoy the sonnets although it always reads like Shakespeare meets Berrigan, which is not particularly unique. That said, despite some similarities in subject matter and a lot of similar territories covered about sex and aging, I found this book pretty refreshing and often quite f...

"i am mostmyself when flashing rapidlymy iridescent wings, drinkingthe juice of fallen fruit."

Kim Addonizio is now one of my favorite poets. She writes Mortal Trash with power, creativity, honesty, and absolutely no shame or fear. That combination is glorified in the poetry arena, but few authors actually have the guts for such vulnerability. This collection (to be vulnerable myself) came to me at a time in my life where I am about done with this so-called love that, in Hollywood films, ends in kissing, but in the real world, ends more like this: I hate hearts please don’t have one I wi...

Mortal Trash by Kim AdonizioA mixture of sensitiveness, deep conclusions, and raw language “Mortal Trash” is a poetry collection of about 70 poems by Kim Adonizio. It is hugely praised by the critics and that made me buy it. Undeniably, Kim Adonizio has sharp observation skills, compares the incomparable, and finds imagery where there isn’t or nobody else noticed it before (like the flushing of the toilet in “The Givens”). Some of her metaphors are mundane, some are personal, some are poetic, so...

Mortal Trash is divided into 4 sections of poems - I thought section 1 (Wishbone) was great, but wasn't a huge fan of the other sections. That being said, there are a few poems in this book that I feel make the whole thing worth it - "Stray Sparks", "Divine", "Party", "Out in the Tranquil Bay", and "116". I'm a big fan of the way Addonizio mashes/sews words and concepts and idioms in unexpected combinations, but since I am an impatient poetry reader, after a while I started to feel a little tire...

Kim is one of my favorite poets, and I've been fortunate enough to participate in one of her workshops. This collection is full of thought-provoking, well-crafted poems. Some favorites include "Name That Means Holy in Greek," "What to Save from the Fire," "Sleep Stage" and "Candy Heart Valentine". The sonnet section didn't resonate with me as well as some of the other pieces. I like some of her other collections better, but this is still worth a read.

The movement of these poems is quite alive. Word choice is still Addonizio's strength. This time, I just don't feel like anything is being said. Or, nothing is being said to me. I feel blank after each poem. Left blinking and grasping for more than the humor and the dance.

big big fan of this one. i think addonizio displays a great sense of connotation and association. over and over i felt sort of corralled indirectly into a very specific response by a series of images and ideas Around this response. impressive work! really delicious turns of phrase also (“overbuttered dark”really got me). also several moments where i literally laughed with delight at the clevernesses.

Seriously gritty poetry the search for love in all the wrong places. Prowling the underbelly of the city encountering drugs, drink, lust deceit, despair and ruin... all with a note of hope.Borrowed this from the University Library, may have to track a copy of this down for my personal library to have around to pick up when the moment strikes.

3.5 starts -- I wanted to love this so bad! A few of my absolute FAVORITE poems of all time are by Kim Addonizio ("Onset" may be my favorite poem EVER, and "New Year's Day" and "First Poem for You" are spectacular). However, this collection was really lacking, in my opinion. I truly liked only two of the poems: "Sleep Stage" and "Dream the Night My Brother Dies." The other poems that I almost liked (such as "Stray Sparks," "Lives of the Poets," "Wishbone," "116," "139," and "154") all seemed unf...

Here Be DragonsI’m not done with the compass & I’m still puzzling over the chartAll those squiggles and numbersSea monsters prowling the depthsDevouring ships serpent tucked whaleHorse fish dinner rhinoceros theseWere my lovers these what draggedMe down what I wanted to be takenTo the underwater city sirensGoatfish sphinxes whores I drankIn the taverns with pirate howlerMonkeys my sea captain ancestors mySozzled staggering fathers & returned But not to any harbor only the curved Surface I sailed...