Adventures in Poetry

In my quest of procrastination this week, I logged off from the net temporarily and picked up a stack of unread books on my shelf in order to expand my mind. I blew through The Alchemist, started The Travel Writer's Handbook and picked up a collection of poetry I bought at a writing event a few months back.

Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. I read through the entire 128 pages in one sitting and the images in the collection still won't leave me alone.

I'm talking about 'what is this thing called love' by Kim Addonizio. This is one cool chick, first of all. I met her at a workshop and she was so real and funny and honest. Her poetry isn't any different, just many layers deeper. After reading her collection, I honestly can't think of poetry the same way anymore.

I admit I am not a poet anymore. Oh, fear the day I scan some of my old poems from high school onto my facebook page! I studied the 'classics' in college but never ventured too far into modern poetry. Maybe that's why I'm so blown away by this little book. It turned everything I believed about the art on its head. Any poet that has a poem titled FUCK and actually pulls it off with an important message is one to pay attention to, in my opinion.

In the different sections, she touches upon love, dying and losing love, addictions and ghosts of the past. It's one of those collections I'll have to visit again to understand even the surface of what she puts out there. It is a collection that caused me to add more poetry collections to my list of requested books on bookmooch.com.

It is a collection that won't leave my head and let me work on my deadlines.