Summary

The web content discusses the impact and beauty of Kim Addonizio's poetry, highlighting her ability to capture human emotions with simplicity and depth.

Abstract

Kim Addonizio's poem "To the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall" resonated widely for its message of empathy and support, encapsulated in evocative language. The article reflects on the poem's viral success and a real-life incident where it was recited to comfort a stranger, reinforcing its powerful message. Addonizio's skill in distilling complex emotions into concise verse is celebrated, with examples from her work that illustrate her profound insights into the female experience, love, and loss. The author expresses admiration for Addonizio's talent, recommending her collection "Tell Me" as a starting point for those new to her poetry, and suggests the use of social media to enjoy her work in a contemporary context.

Opinions

The author has a deep appreciation for Kim Addonizio's poetry, describing it as profound, heartbreaking, and joyous.
Addonizio's ability to convey emotions is seen as a rare talent, with her poems described as deceptively simple and delicious.
The poem "To the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall" is considered to have made a significant impact, exemplifying the essence of sisterly support.
The author feels a personal connection to Addonizio's work, experiencing a sense of pride in her wider recognition.
Addonizio's poetry is recommended as a source of comfort and hope, particularly during times of isolation such as quarantine.
The author suggests that Addonizio's poems can be appreciated even in small doses on social media, but also emphasizes the importance of supporting her by purchasing her books.

THE POWER OF POETRY

“Listen I love you joy is coming”

The wit and the wisdom in the words of Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio’s poem “To the woman crying uncontrollably in the next stall” became hugely popular after she wrote it in 2016, with extensive quotes and photographs of its printed form reproduced many times on Instagram and Twitter. It is very easy to see why it hit its mark so soundly. It’s a profound and heartbreaking message of sisterly support, written in the most simple, delicate, breathtaking language:

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever closed your legs to a man you loved opened them for one you didn’t moved against a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach seaweed clinging to your ankles paid good money for a bad haircut backed away from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled into the back seat for lack of a tampon if you swam across a river under rain sang using a dildo for a microphone stayed up to watch the moon eat the sun entire ripped out the stitches in your heart because why not if you think nothing & no one can / listen I love you joy is coming

- Kim Addonizio

In a later twist, the sort of perfectly meta twist the internet loves, in 2019 a woman named Agnes Frimston read Addonizio’s poem aloud to a real-life woman crying uncontrollably in a toilet stall. The tale of this episode, with the poem at its heart, made a neatly closed circle of sisterly support. It was glorious; little wonder that it touched so many and has become so widely shared.

Like so many people, I was already an Addonizio fan when that poem hit its far wider audience, and I had that curiously proprietorial sense of delight and almost-pride that accompanies the realisation that other people are finally realising a truth you’ve been trying to peddle for years. (You know, a bit like that one time when you watched Breaking Bad way before everyone else and then didn’t quite know how to deal with the fact that every second friend was wearing Walt and Jesse costumes at the next fancy dress party you all attended).

Because, to put it simply: Kim Addonizio — I love her. I think she’s got the genius knack of distilling the essence of a human emotion into the briefest words, a knack that I as a writer would be humbled to even begin to grasp. She gets it, and her poems tell it.

Born in Washington, educated and now settled in San Francisco, Addonizio is 65 years old and her poems span many decades. She has written extensively about the female experience: about desire, love, sex and motherhood. She sees through the trees to the dense heartwood and then she spears it and carves it, shaping it within a few well-crafted lines. It is deceptively simple. It is delicious. She gives such happiness with her deft ability to do this, even when the poem is a sad or angry one. Take the first two stanzas of “Ex-Boyfriends”:

They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober,

they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom.

- Kim Addonizio

You can see them all in your head now, can’t you? It’s six short lines but it’s every ex-boyfriend you ever had, or your friend had, or your sister had.

Or this, the transcendently beautiful “Stolen Moments”:

What happened, happened once. So now it’s best in memory — an orange he sliced: the skin unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin membrane between us, the exquisite orange, tongue, orange, my nakedness and his, the way he pushed me up against the fridge — Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s merciless, the way it travels in and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers on the table. And we still had hours.

-Kim Addonizio

We don’t know what happened, who she’s talking about, what it meant, what it was. It’s a short poem, giving little away. And yet we do know. We know the mercilessness of love, that it “travels in and keeps emitting light”. We know that the stolen moments sometimes mean everything, and we know that she knows that, and she has written it so well.

The profundity of poems rests so often in what isn’t said, in the gaps and spaces between the lines, but to do this meaningfully, the lines creating those spaces need to be perfect. I think that Addonizio’s are as close to perfect as any poet’s I have read. Her poems are joyous.

In this strange, febrile, home-centred time her poems are a welcome tether to the things we all experienced before quarantine began, and a hopeful signpost to all the experiences that are yet to come. I recommend them wholeheartedly. And they’re perfect for anyone suffering, as I and so many others have during lockdown, with a lack of concentration and focus.

If you also like the idea of finding happiness in Addonizio’s lines, my recommendation would be to start with her book “Tell Me”. It’s twenty years old, but it’s a timeless collection of poems and it’s a good example of her at her absolute writing peak.

(Or try, as I sometimes do, the hashtag #kimaddonizio on Instagram, and scroll through page after page of her work set out in squares. It’s a thoroughly modern way to enjoy small doses of the life-enhancer that is her poetry. But you should buy her books too, because she’s worth it).