Exit Opera: Poems

“Even if you don’t happen to love opera, it’s possible to appreciate how the medium works to create a visceral, moving experience. Sorrow intensifies through the music and voice.”

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. 

Addonizio’s opera “takes place in a dive bar,” with “difficult staging,” “exploding stars,” and “a little country blues, a little jazz guitar.” As in her previous collections Tell Me and Mortal Trash, the poems waver between longing for connection and the desire to disappear altogether. This time, however, Addonizio signals a dramatic departure—I really must be leaving soon, but here’s one last show before the curtain falls. However, the curtain has not yet fallen on Addonizio, who first must transform all the darkness into something understood. And, if not understood then at the very least, remembered. 

The book opens with two epigraphs, one by Betty Davis: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,” and another by Bertolt Brecht, a poet and playwright who believed that by "alienating" or distancing the audience, they could remain objective and critical. Brecht didn't want an emotional response from the audience. Perhaps Addonizio concurs. 

“In dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.”

From the quote, we may glean a small reassurance that Addonizio, whom we’ve come to trust on the subject of dark times, still has a sense of humor. Addonizio’s philosophy aligns with Brecht’s—that art should confront reality and provoke thought, even in troubling times. That is what Addonizio is about to do (again) and with the Davis quote, we cannot say we were not warned. 

Having earned many honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Addonizio is no stranger to critical acclaim. She has earned accolades and garnered thoughtful reviews as well as affirming book cover blurbs from many prominent and beloved poets and writers.

What is typically noted is Addonizio's unapologetic dive into a world where beauty and brutality frequently bump uglies, and all is told through a street-smart voice that picks through curbside bins overflowing with contemporary American culture. 

As a poet with scores of dedicated readers, many know Addonizio from the craft books, Ordinary Genius and The Poet’s Companion, co-written with Dorianne Laux. Others may know her from Bukowski in a Sundress, her 2016 memoir, or her works of fiction. Most, however, probably know her from books of poetry and anthologies spread across several decades. Addonizio has walked the poet talk so to speak for a long time now. How many people have pinned to the wall her “Fuck” poem from her 2004 collection, What Is This Thing Called Love? 

Consider the tragic nature of a significant number of operas and their common themes such as betrayal, unrequited or doomed love, sacrifice, and death. In reading Exit Opera, one may see how we are all characters on life’s big stage where we sometimes commit dark acts or are caught up in them.

Addonizio is comfortable working with the themes of death and despair, and frequently flirts with the idea of suicide: "I want to die," she writes more than once, but the threat feels more like a weary exhale than imminent danger. What rings with emotional truth is the sensation of living on the edge. “Maybe you’ll understand this life when you slam your fist into a cloud,” suggests the opening line of “Existential Voyage” and, in “Insomnia Song”: “I prefer to stay here . . . saying many pointless things . . . to no one / and in that way go on . . . not killing myself . . . or anyone else / like an ugly flower.” 

There is plenty to grieve. The metaphorical Brünnhilde is always about to throw herself on the funeral pyre. But then there’s “Aria Di Sorbetto” in which we are invited into the abattoir, or slaughterhouse, to “Get a taste of this raspberry tart / before the bad odor starts.” And if we wonder at all about Addonizio’s opinion of opera: “Ah, ah opera! It sounds like a whale that swallowed a musical / and I loathe musicals.” However, there are those “operatic” moments the poet does not loathe: “that time when Josh suddenly / broke into song in the Eighth Avenue subway . . .” the time when “a thin shiv of joy / slipped under my ribs, and my daughter / took my hand as the train shrieked in.”

Her voice is razor-sharp, filled with both wit and weariness. There’s a deep-cutting cynicism here, but there is also a deep commitment to all its causes. A missing brother, a city resembling a zombie apocalypse, and the loss of a friend to cancer. Cancer. Addonizio completes “Aria Di Sorbetto” on a hopeful note: “and if you ask / me to love this world yes, oh yes, / I will.” 

In the final poem, “By Way of a Reminder,” Addonizio seems to speak directly to us: 

“Even though most of your family is underground
and your shield is made of cardboard and the backyard
is on fire again, it’s best to ignore the sirens
inviting you join them and instead
befriend an out-of-tune banjo, a broken
swing set, a grounded bee you can nurse
with sugar water or a trip to a sunflower.”

She continues, “Mostly / you just need to keep walking deeper / into the desert . . . you need a night out, a new coat, a provider who doesn’t drop the call / in the middle of a sob. Maybe some good weed. / After that it’s up to the gods / who can’t exactly be counted on . . .”

Addonizio confronts death without flinching, but she doesn’t let it have the final word. Humor is a tool for surviving and Addonizio is surviving all over the place. She’s surviving in the poem “Self-Portrait with a Statue of Fernando Pessoa”: “I mean thinking about war makes me want to drink myself into a state of / impaired etc. . . . Then again, maybe the world isn’t terrible & I just need a different leave-in / smoothing conditioner.”

Even if you don’t happen to love opera, it’s possible to appreciate how the medium works to create a visceral, moving experience. Sorrow intensifies through the music and voice. The images and stories drive catharsis. Exit Opera works in a similar way, staging life’s drama, the playing of mind games, art held in contempt, nights sleeping in bad hotels, getting drunk and admitting to momentary spiritual and moral bankruptcy. Thankfully, Addonizio brings catharsis at key moments, like when she esteems Benedict Cumberbatch as an “elegant dactyl.”

Alcohol, cigarettes, sex. The cover art of Addonizio’s books of poems has evoked such cravings. Perhaps with Exit Opera, we are to crave death. On the cover, the only image is a darling lifeless bird that appears to have sung its last song. How is this not a foreshadow for every living thing? Well, it is. But here we are, like Milton, who, in the book’s titular poem Addonizio writes “went blind, he felt useless, but then he / decided it was okay / to stand still. To abide. Look at the trees, who are patient, who suffer us to / touch them.”

It’s a beautiful, sustained note, that as long as there is something to do, something to write, something (or someone) we are allowed to touch, we might as well hang out. Maybe get a leather biker jacket, write a song or a poem, adopt a stray cat.