It does not at all surprise me that Kim Addonizio compares herself to Bukowski in the title of her memoir, as in everything I've read form her she shares his glorying in the low and rotten and wrong and dissipated, but also shares his central core of hope and love; her cynicism is driven by disappointed hope. This is on full display in this collection in poems like "Signs":

"This morning the East Rive Ferry is just a boat
pulling up to the ugly little park in Williamsburg
& Manhattan isn't the underworld projecting its
eternal office buildings into those clouds
The seagull landing on my balcony isn't an image of
transcendence or being destroyed by love

There isn't any meaning in things
There probably aren't even any things
which is hard to think about & this morning I don't
want to think about

anything
but I do, I think about...things
as each special, unique individual in the long line
below my window steps onto the ferry
as rain slips down not representing the Many cleaved
from the One & black umbrellas unfold

I think about the giant wax man in the museum with
three wicks in his head slowly burning
& the hollow as his face starts to melt from the inside
& the heartsick woman who jumped from the bridge,
hauled up & covered with a tarp on the dock
I'm sick of death & sick to death of romantic love but I
still want to live if only to rearrange the base metals of
my depression
like canned lima beans on a mid-century modern
dinner plate

My last love had beautiful green eyes
Eyes like two caged parrots refusing to say anything
Eyes like two rivers filling with toxic runoff

Maybe later today the sun will come out and smile like
a kind nanny but it won't be a kind nanny, or even a
mean nanny, shaking me hard One day it will just cool,
like...a star

When the clock says 11:11 it doesn't mean
the design of things has risen to the surface & been
made manifest

It means I'm still here hours later watching the boats
dock & then leave without me
It means the people who commuted across the river to
work on Wall Street
are still there, their eye like suitcases of small, unmarked bills
& everything is going to change for the worse"


Wow. Just....wow. The three similes she sneaks in there in a poem about how nothing is a simile are brutal and raw and hurting and amazing. This is the second collection of Addonizio's that I've read and loved and it won't be my last.

Beautiful, elegiac, powerful. Kim Addonizio writes of experience through metaphor and all the affordances of a master poet in Now We're Getting Somewhere.

Now We're Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is as much of an introspective emotional and existential journey as it is a confession that we are no where near perfect human beings. We all have a lot of work to do emotionally, spiritually, and philosophically, but as we struggle with these internal paradigms, we're also watching the world suffer around us and degrade. How do we break through the malaise and paralysis to make progress with ourselves and the world? Perhaps by being less serious about everything, allowing ourselves to fall apart, and taking action that makes actual progress as opposed to the actions that people deem as "making progress."

Review on the blog will post June 2, 2021.

Addonizio is one of our finest writers. She writes the everyday occurrence with the same wonderment as one feel's when unearthing a treasure.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. I really struggled to connect with the themes Addonizio put forth in this volume of poetry, and didn't find any particular language that stopped me in my tracks, which is usually what I look for in poetry.

A book by Addonizio is always a cause for celebration, perhaps a dark celebration. Her poems
bring Whitman and other voices into the 21rst century with wicked humor. The poems transcend
the page and live on their own for a long time.

Wonderful new book from one of America's most important poets. As always, the language crackles and swerves and surprises at every turn.

There are poetry volumes that will end up being exactly what you were hoping for, delighting and inspiring just the way you imagined when you first sat down to read. Maybe you've purchased the latest by a favorite poet, maybe you've been gifted a new volume from a trusted friend, or perhaps a positive review has raised your expectations about a new work. Now We're Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is one of those books. I could not have been more pleased to discover that my enjoyment of this poet's work and my fascination with her creativity were well-rewarded with an impressive new new collection of fantastic poems.

There are a lot of winners here, but I'd be willing to bet "To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall" might alone justify the purchase price of the whole book. I'm looking forward to coming back to this one over and over.

"Archive of Recent Uncomfortable Emotions" is another standout for me, and I'm looking forward to sharing this one with a therapist friend who enjoys reading whatever has me worked up this week.

I'm tempted to share something specific that I enjoyed about every poem in the book, but I'll let you enjoy discovering the delights contained in each for yourself. Don't miss this one.

Thank you to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley.com for the electronic advance review copy.

Sharp, funny, and incisive. It feels like Addonizio sits down to write each poem with the specific intention of bursting someone's bubble. An antidote to illusions in an age of artifice.