Exit Opera: Poems

National Book Award finalist Addonizio (Now We’re Getting Somewhere) uses frank, wittily caustic language to ask what life means and how to ride out its anxieties; she knows exactly how absurd our existence is, and she’s not backing down. Sure, she muses, “I like a person who sees clearly, & can’t handle it / …My people lie awake at night, waiting for a giant, shallow-rooted tree / or a hunk of space debris to fall on them.” And sure, as her regular readers know, she finds relief in recreational substance use: “Drugs are stupid but I like them anyway, how they build a little cellar / to shelter me from the tornadoes of my bad thoughts & feelings.” But then she turns around to advise “Go be happy,” adding “I prefer to stay here…saying many pointless things…to no one // & in that way go on…not killing myself…or anyone else / like an ugly flower.” Addonizio frames her life as an opera (“maybe an aria sung by a feral kitten”), and as she contemplates the curtain (see her title), she turns in a gutsy, bravura performance.