Exit Opera
Poems
Format:Hardback
Publisher:WW Norton & Co
Published:15th Oct '24
£21.50
Supplier delay - available to order, but may take longer than usual.
Set in locations from dive bars to Montparnasse Cemetery, from an ancient Greek temple to a tourist shop in Assisi, Exit Opera explores the ever-vexing issues of time, mortality, love, and loss, and considers the roles of art and human connection. Whatever their nominal subject—jazz, zombies, Buddhism, Siberian tigers—these poems make for a compelling mix of humor and pain, difficulty and solace. In a nod to Keats, one of the many fellow travelers in these poems, Addonizio invites us to “[inscribe] a few verses on whatever water / you can find” and assures readers that they are not alone in navigating the challenges and changes of mortal life. As she writes in “My Opera”:
The staging is difficult. Exploding starsare involved, high-redshift galaxies, interior chambers,
a little country blues, a little jazz guitar, a jam jar containing
a tiny ocean & a tinier rowboat rocking gently in the swells
that I am steering toward you in the dark.
"There are two kinds of opera goers: those who make a mad dash for the exit as soon as the singer leaves the stage, and those who stick around for the curtain call. If Kim Addonizio’s latest book of poems, Exit Opera, was an actual opera, the audience would never stop throwing flowers at her feet. Her voice is razor-sharp, filled with both wit and weariness. Addonizio confronts death without flinching, but she doesn’t let it have the final word." -- Debbra Palmer - New York Journal of Books
"Like a rum cake that gets you drunk after one slice, Exit Opera is strong and bitter and irresistible. Over and over, it repeats the question what does it mean to be alive?" -- Erica Goss - Pedestal Magazine
"Writing poetry or opera may not make you sweat, but it is still hard work to tug back against an overwhelming darkness, to make something beautiful that continues to gesture towards the dark from which it was born." -- Susanna Lang - Rhino Poetry
ISBN: 9781324078937
Dimensions: 218mm x 163mm x 15mm
Weight: 273g
112 pages