Mortal Trash: Poems - Hardcover

Addonizio, Kim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393249166 ISBN 13: 9780393249163

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016

Synopsis

“Kim Addonizio’s voice lifts from the page, alive and biting―unleashing wit with a ruthless observation.”―San Francisco Book Review

Passionate and irreverent, Mortal Trash transports the readers into a world of wit, lament, and desire. In a section called “Over the Bright and Darkened Lands,” canonical poems are torqued into new shapes. “Except Thou Ravish Me,” reimagines John Donne’s famous “Batter my heart, Three-person’d God” as told from the perspective of a victim of domestic violence. Like Pablo Neruda, Addonizio hears “a swarm of objects that call without being answered”: hospital crash carts, lawn gnomes, Evian bottles, wind-up Christmas crèches, edible panties, cracked mirrors. Whether comic, elegiac, or ironic, the poems in Mortal Trash remind us of the beauty and absurdity of our time on earth.

From “Scrapbook”:

We believe in the one-ton rose
and the displaced toilet equally. Our blues

assume you understand
not much, and try to be alive, just as we do,

and that it may be helpful to hold the hand
of someone as lost as you.

About this title

About the Author

Kim Addonizio is the author of seven poetry collections and two books on writing poetry: The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her poetry collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Oakland, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393249166
• ISBN 13: 9780393249163
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112