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So here to introduce
Kim Addonizio

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is a good friend of mine,
managing editor of Sonora

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Review and MFA Candidate
in Poetry, Whitney DeVos.

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Thank you, Jake.

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Kim Addonizio is the celebrated
author of two novels,

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five collections of poetry, and
two acclaimed volumes on craft.

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"The Poet's Companion,
a Guide to Pleasures

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of Writing Poetry," and
"Ordinary Genius, a Guide

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for the Poet Within," which
was published last year.

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She has received numerous
awards for her work,

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including fellowships from
the Guggenheim Foundation

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and the National
Endowment for the Arts,

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as well as a Pushcart Prize
and the John Ciardi Lifetime

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Achievement Award.

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Her most recent
collection is her fifth,

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and is entitled "Lucifer
at the Starlight,"

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after George Meredith's sonnet
detailing the title character's

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valiant and yet
inherently doomed

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ascent at celestial ascension.

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"Lucifer at the
Starlight" is committed

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to framing the frighteningly
parallel contemporary plight

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of humanity with
Addonizio's own inventive

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imagination substituting
the corporate CEO for Satan

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in the title poem.

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This collection aligned with
the body of her previous work

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is urgently engaged
with recognizing

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the essential and
yet paradoxical

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dualism of existence.

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What begins as light for
Addonizio will end in darkness,

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and yet, such an end is
simultaneously a new beginning.

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As she relates the
heartbreaks of love and life,

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she also sings of their
ecstatic pleasures.

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Addonizio's poetry
is unrelenting.

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She's a blues
singer in stilettos,

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never ceasing to croon
towards heaven amidst

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the struggles of life on Earth.

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Her poems are intensely lyrical
in a cracked, and smoky,

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and ever-so-sexy way that
recalls underground jazz clubs

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and post-coital cigarettes.

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Her tone is wry, and her voice
will seduce you into a romp

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or six with paradox.

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Her diction and syntax are
both vibrant and playful.

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Her inquiries are
intelligent and necessary,

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always composed with
an impeccable ear

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for the gritty, inevitable, and
ultimately beautiful details

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that make up the musical
notes of our chaotic lives.

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Addonizio is John Keats-cum-
urban philosopher,

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at times speaking, at times
whispering, shouting, cursing,

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or blessing, sometimes all
at once in a language wholly

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original, empathetic,
and entirely her own.

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She speaks directly with her
soul and directly to ours.

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Her work invites us
to experience strength

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through being
persistently vulnerable,

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to expose and cherish the
parts we strive to keep hidden

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in our own personal darknesses.

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Addonizio's poetry unites
us all in her insistence

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to celebrate this
constant struggle of what

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Milan Kundera deemed as "the
unbearable lightness of being."

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Please join me in welcoming the
lovely and extraordinary genius

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of Kim Addonizio.