Kim AddonizioMy Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits

Over the years one of the things I've come to admire about Kim Addonizio's poems is how profoundly human they are: passionate, earthy, funny, and unflinching -- all qualities on display in her beautiful new book -- My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits. Beautiful not just because of Addonizio's poems, but also because of Charles D. Jones' remarkable woodcuts. Blues poem and woodcut on facing pages, so the latter is not an illustration of the text but a collaboration between poet and artist.What do Addonizio's blues sound like? Like no blues you've ever heard. And like all of them: "This train goes from Hangover Junction to I'm So Tired City / This train is chasing Prozac with flat champagne / This train carries everything you've done to escape the memory of me ..." ("This Train") And from "Northeast Corridor Blues," "Traveling down to DC to bury my mother / Put her ashes next to the bones of my father / Tell the priest he won't have to bother[.]"And there are the poems in which Addonizio stretches out, like harmonica player taking a long solo: "The men going through garbage cans / rifle Burger King bags / for a few pale fries. They lie down / in doorways. In dreams / their mothers check their foreheads for fever ..." ("Full Moon")And the final quatrain from "Radio Host":You were the river that drowned me most.You were. Now it's the radio hostchoosing the music, bringing you back --you, and the door, and the foolproof lock.It's just as difficult to stop quoting as it is to stop reading.Eight more words, to show how well Addonizio can work when the blues poem doesn't afford a luxury of time and space: "Lightning. Lotus. Chameleon. / Slide the needle deeper in."I did say "unflinching."