Students of Kim Addonizio

May 6, 2020

“The Commuters of Penn Station Want to Go Home” by In Koo KimPosted by

In Koo Kim

THE COMMUTERS OF PENN STATION WANT TO GO HOME

The commuters of Penn Station want to go home. 
A way home is up there, somewhere on the board.
The gate will show there, up there on the board.
A penetrating stare may uncrack the code,
A penetrating stare will uncrack the code.
That trash bag by the stairs looks like a man.
The trash bag lying by the stairs is a man.
Hey You. You lookin’ at me?
Not you. Yeah You—Why you lookin’ at me?
A flicker on the board and they flow toward the man.
The flow becomes a river and we step over the man.
Stairways must be kept clear, rivers flow to the sea.
The stairway is now clear, that man was swept out to sea.
The commuters of Penn Station want to go home.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

In Koo Kim: “I’d never taken an online course before, but decided to risk it since I heard great things about Kim. I received helpful high quality insights from Kim and her assemblage of poets. I studied with her in the spring of this year, and she helped me learn several forms, including the duplex, which is one of my submissions.”

Rattle Logo

May 4, 2020

“Wild Me” by Sarah FrelighPosted by

Sarah Freligh

WILD ME

after Mary Oliver by way of Kim Addonizio

You do not have to be bad.
You do not have to get down on your knees
in a gas station bathroom for a guy
whose name you’ve already forgotten. 
You only have to tell him
a dirty joke in which you’re
the punchline. Tell me
about your sex toys
and I’ll show you mine. 
Meanwhile the sun sets.
Meanwhile feral cats slink
from shadow to shadow 
howling at your need. 
Meanwhile, you grow paws, 
claws, a tail. Wherever
you are, a coyote is watching
and waiting over and over
for you to lie down.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

Sarah Freligh: “Years before I took the first of three online classes with Kim, she was already teaching me about the kind of poetry I wanted to write. As a fiction writer turned poet, Jimmy and Rita and Tell Me were my first bibles; I kept copies in my purse or backpack until they were worn-out and dog-eared. Years later, Kim is still teaching me and so many others. In fact, I wager you’d be hard-pressed to find a contemporary American poet who hasn’t been influenced in some way by Kim. My biggest takeaway from studying with Kim is a reminder to be fearless in my own work, to pursue my own truths about the world with passion.” (web)

Rattle Logo

May 1, 2020

“Today’s Sermon” by Cheryl DumesnilPosted by

Cheryl Dumesnil

TODAY’S SERMON

is slop buckets knocking 
against each other

and a towel cart 
squeaking down the hall

and grease stains 
worked into cracked palms.

Today’s sermon is
red-wing blackbirds

dive-bombing a raven
with yolk on its beak.

Today’s sermon is 
spring leaves as tiny 

soldiers receiving 
soot with open hands.

Today’s sermon is 
a fifteen-dollar 

garage sale bike 
and now the kid

can ride to school
like everybody else.

Today’s sermon is
dragging grace around

like a rust-eaten wagon
pretending it’s whole.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

Cheryl Dumesnil: “I began studying with Kim Addonizio in 1992, when she and Dorianne Laux co-taught day-long craft workshops in Dorianne’s home. In the summer of 1994, I joined Kim’s weekly poetry workshop, which she hosted in her basement apartment in San Francisco. I had just completed a thoroughly alienating first year of my MFA program and returning to Kim’s workshop felt like coming home. Working with Kim, I learned how to write from the raw nerve, how to use imagery and the music of the line to telegraph that heat to readers. To this day, if I feel like I’m losing my edge, reading Kim’s poems will help me find it again. Beyond craft, early on in my career Kim taught me how to muscle up in the face of adversity and rejection. ‘Never let the bastards get you down’—she wrote that on a postcard she sent to me in graduate school, and I took it to heart. With her support I learned to turn adversity into an opportunity to recall my vision, to strengthen my resolve, and to move forward. By example, Kim has taught me that, as fierce and edgy as a poet’s writing might be, it comes from a bruise-tender place. You can’t have one without the other. If you’re all edge, you’re pure defensiveness; if you’re all bruise-tenderness, you’ll never get out of bed. Living a poet’s life means developing the ability to be both vulnerable enough to feel the impact of the world and strong enough to speak the truth about it.” (web)

Rattle Logo

April 29, 2020

“My Neighbor” by Steve CushmanPosted by

Steve Cushman

MY NEIGHBOR

who tried to hang himself from a garage 
rafter two months ago, seems fine this 
morning, blowing leaves off the back porch.  
Last night I saw him cooking burgers, a beer 
in one hand, spatula in the other, surveying his 
backyard, as if surprised by its simple beauty.

What makes a man want to take his life?
Mental illness, chemicals, abundant sadness?  
Yes and yes and yes and a million more yesses.

When is the bottom the bottom?
I don’t pretend to know, but he looks fine 
now. But how can you forget 
that moment when you kicked the chair away, 
everything tightening as your throat snapped shut?
How can you ever forget that?  
Maybe you lock the door 
and throw away the key, so that even 
on those days when you reach 
for the door again it will not let you in. 

Last night, while grilling, I watched him 
plant three pansies in a large backyard pot, 
orange and purple and yellow,
as if he was trying to brighten the world a little. 

When I asked how he was doing 
he said, fine and day by day,
and he does look pretty good, 
maybe thinner and a little shaky,
but if you didn’t know you wouldn’t suspect
he was someone who had stood on the edge of a cliff 
and someone or something beyond himself
pulled him back, an act that surprised even him.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

Steve Cushman: “I studied with Kim and a wonderful group of poets in 2014 via an online class. It was at a time when I was transitioning from primarily writing fiction to writing poetry, as well. The class allowed me to test myself, to see if I could write poetry at all. The students in the class were amazing and pushed me as a writer in ways I hadn’t been pushed since graduate school. Kim was a gentle and strong teacher, allowing us to each move in our own way but still pushing us to do more. Now it’s been five years since then, and I’m still trying to figure out this poetry thing, but I have no doubt that Kim’s class, and the poets writing and studying along with me, made a huge difference on this journey.” (web)

Rattle Logo

April 27, 2020

“Rivermouth” by Eleanor ChannellPosted by

Eleanor Channell

RIVERMOUTH

If you weren’t here, I’d fear the surge
of surf. I’d watch the moon wax and wane,
feel the constant pulling of tides, the urge
to drown myself in pity and booze, to explain 
my life as “Cape Disappointment” with hard luck
spinning and winning souls like mine, a jetty
of riprap pointing to my faults, the muck
of my past too deep to dredge. But you say
you see in me a strength that strengthens you,
a heart that yearns for your heart and finds it,
upsetting even the odds we thought we knew,
renewing old hopes, confounding old conflicts.
All I know is we’re here, my love, our bed warm,
your body a bulwark to ride out the storm. 

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

Eleanor Channell: “Last fall I enrolled in Kim Addonizio’s online course ‘Exploring the Sonnet’ from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her passion for the sonnet was infectious, even through the Ethernet. While I was familiar with traditional Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms, having been a high school English teacher for many years, Kim encouraged me to explore the spirit of these box-like poems. In her class, I discovered that sonnets are the ideal vehicles for reflecting or meditating on a subject, then turning that subject inside out with a shift in thought, or an unexpected ‘escape’ towards the end. The poem uses rhyme and meter, albeit loosely, within the sonnet’s traditional subjects of love and nature. Still, I hope ‘Rivermouth’ is free enough and plain enough to convey what Kim was advocating in her course: a synthesis of feeling and passion enhanced by thoughtful and deliberate consideration of form.”

Rattle Logo

April 24, 2020

“Pink Mountain” by X.P. CallahanPosted by

X.P. Callahan

PINK MOUNTAIN

When Joe filled me in on his big plan
to take off for the desert
and spend the days painting vistas of
red rocks, his eyes overflowed
with the marine light that can suffuse
some people as they become
translucent in their long dying. I
hadn’t learned yet to discern
such light. I thought my job was to talk
sense in his hospital room,
his last, with its view of Mount Rainier.

Later my mother called out
to strangers queuing up for a train,
and I knew enough to say
I can’t see them but I know you can.

Late September. Joe had ten
weeks. Seventy times we could have watched
that mountain turn every shade
of desert with the sun going down.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

X.P. Callahan: “Kim Addonizio was my first poetry teacher and remains the best. Over the past twelve years, I’ve taken several of her workshops, including an inspiring and liberating class on revision. In person, Kim has an uncanny gift for discerning the heart of an embryonic poem after a single reading and championing the poem’s organic evolution. In an online context, she balances guiding the workshop with making space for participants to forge their own connections. Kim has taught me to see that what I think is on the page may not be there, and to listen for what will speak more fully for being left unsaid. And as a formalist of sorts, I appreciate her evident pleasure in traditional and bespoke forms. I’m grateful that Kim chooses to provide high-quality instruction for post-MFA poets as well as for poets who are altogether outside the MFA system. Kim’s affirmation of poetry as ‘soul work’ invites all of us to adopt a generous, sustainable perspective on our writing.”

Rattle Logo

April 22, 2020

“Duct Tape, Sleep, Pretzels” by Susan BrownePosted by

Susan Browne

DUCT TAPE, SLEEP, PRETZELS

At 35,000 feet, I look out the airplane window
& see duct tape on the propeller.
It reminds me of the human condition
& so does the curly head of the girl next to me 
resting against my shoulder.
At first, it’s uncomfortable
being used as a pillow
& her head is heavy, but I never sleep
on planes anyway & can still read
my book through the corkscrews of her hair. 
Out the window, past the duct tape, the sky 
goes on a journey of freedom
& fearlessness. That’s the human condition, too,
or else no one would ever get on a plane
or have children. The girl shifts in her seat, 
her head snuggles closer to my chest. 
She could be my daughter
although her mother is on her other side
fast asleep. Like being fastened into sleep? 
As if sleep holds you, secure.
My philosophy professor in college told the class
there was no such thing as security.
He leaned out of his chair 
toward us, his face all sharp angles,
his eyes holding the softness
of frayed silk. He killed himself
before he could grade our finals. 
The mother wakes up, looks at me, startled.
Oh, sorry, she says & tries to wake her daughter
with little shoves. It’s okay, I say.
She sighs back into sleep.
I open the pack of pretzels that’s been squashed
in my pocket & eat the broken pieces,
trying not to get crumbs in the girl’s hair.

—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
Students of Kim Addonizio

__________

Susan Browne: “In 1996, I took a workshop with Kim Addonizio in Petaluma, California. I then took workshops with her for the next twenty years. I had found my teacher. She taught me how to revise. She taught me surprise and tension, the music of the line, the power of humor and risk, leaps and how to wait. How to put away the poem and wait a week, a month, a year. She was endlessly encouraging and inspiring, but never easy. I can still hear her saying, ‘That’s not the most compelling language.’ She taught me duende. She is my Queen of Duende.” (web)

Rattle Logo