Mortal Trash

National Book Award finalist Addonizio (Tell Me) fills her latest collection not with trash but with edgy free verse (along with several sonnets) about contemporary situations of love and loss shot through with allusions to classic poets such as William Shakespeare, Matthew Arnold, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. One pleasure in reading Addonizio is remembering the poem from which she derives lines such as "The sea is calm tonight." (Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"). The poems begin with a word which begets another word and another until she runs out of associations, and they end pleasingly on just the right note. If there's a prize for the perfect ending, this author should have it. Her pieces start out like ordinary conversation as in "Manners"—"Address older people as sir or ma'am." Then with a word or two, she shifts the diction, so it becomes less ordinary, somewhat surreal, and fully out there.