Reviewed by Susannah Indigo
(12/18/02)
When I teach poetry to young kids, we often start with the premise
that "a poem makes us see everything for the first time." We close
eyes and play the "poetry game", as children begin to describe
ordinary items and experiences using original and often extraordinary
language. Shy children come out of their shells for this one -- a
game with words and ideas that's not nerdy! -- and imagination and
creativity begin to soar. An old yellow playground ball described to a
circle of closed eyes without using the words "round", "yellow",
"catch", or "throw", becomes "...hot like the sun, and when it comes
to me and I can hold it in my arms, I am on fire, and I feel as proud
as God on a perfect summer day." (from a 4th grader!) Needless to
say, I always leave these sessions inspired for the rest of my day.
Two books of very adult poetry have inspired me this way recently,
making me see everything they have to say for the very first time.
The subjects they're writing about -- drinking, drugs, sex,
prostitution, abuse, God, love, loss, anger -- are surely all as old
as the world, yet here they are brand new, in language that soars, as
Emanuel Xavier might say, from the salsa of their souls, to the
cha-cha-cha of Tito Puente, and their words are, as Billy Collins
says about Kim Addonizio's poems, "stark mirrors of
self-examination... looked into without blinking."
"You fuck me while I write poetry / and the words get blurred /
Worshipping my ass as if it were a Catholic deity" begins Emanuel
Xavier's poem "Elegantly Fucked," and it seems as though God is
everywhere in these poems, especially the sexual ones. Coming from a
life of gay prostitution on the streets of New York City to Grand Slam
Championships at the Nuyorican Poet's Café, Xavier brings us
wide-eyed into his complex life, full of childhood abuse and anger,
too many nameless lovers, contemplations on the Latino/gay/American
dream, and the pitfalls of ambition and desire.
"Surviving the streets as a hustler / does not mean I have to
spread my ass cheeks / wide open for publication / open the gates of
banjee heaven for profiles or reviews / throw my legs high up in the
raw air / until I can touch the grace of God with my callused
feet..." summons up such anger, yet Americano is also
filled with hope, and a belief in the cleansing power of sex and lust
and love and the redemptive powers of art -- "I am not done
fighting yet / I am not done reading yet / I am not done writing yet /
the future is in our words." This is an extraordinary volume of
thirty-five poems, and it is not possible to read Xavier's work and
come away without a fresh new look at a time and a place in a culture
-- our culture -- that can never be brought to the light often enough.
Read
an interview with Emanuel Xavier in this issue
Read a
poem, Risk, from Emanuel Xavier also in this issue
Read a poem, Born This Way, from Emanuel
Xavier, in Slow Trains
Also Recommended:
Piñero, a film with an outstanding performance
by Benjamin Bratt as the late Miguel Piñero, who helped found the
Nuyorican Poet's Café
"Those men I fucked when I was drunk / I can't even see their
faces anymore ..." begins Kim Addonizio's elegantly painful
poem "One-Night Stands," ending with the truth of our internal
dialogue in every meaningless late-night bar encounter we've ever
known -- "Ask for a cigarette and the fire to light it, burn a
few hours, show me you love me that much."
I am always astounded by Addonizio's poetry and fiction, by the level
of honesty and self-examination she is willing to share with the
world, along with her ability to say what needs to be said in exactly
the right way. "God, it's sexual, opening a beer when you swore
you wouldn't drink tonight, taking the first deep gulp..." she
admits in "Affair," which is of course not about a love affair with
another person but with the bottle, a love affair that might "fill
up the leaky balloon of your heart -- don't you believe in trying to
fill it, no matter what the odds, don't you believe it still might
happen, aren't you that kind of woman?" Addonizio lives a
serious literary life -- finalist for the National Book Award (for
this very book), fellowships, teaching -- yet here she is offering us
the stark reality of a woman's life of lust and addiction and love
gone wrong, all of it laced with an absolute longing for the power of
passion and love -- "I want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love
until it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again and put on
that little black dress and wait for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me just how fucking good I look."
If you read enough of Addonizio's work at one sitting, it's guaranteed
to transport you into a smokier, sexier, more intense space than you
might have visited in a very long time.
See Kim Addonizio's Web site
Also Recommended:
In the Box Called Pleasure, stories by Kim
Addonizio
