Lucifer at the Starlite

By Kim Addonizio
Norton, $23.95, 89 pages

Kim Addonizio’s voice lifts from the page, alive and biting, in her newest collection of poems titled Lucifer at the Starlite. From the pop of the gun, Addonizio tears fervently from the gates, unleashing wit with a ruthless observation. The nightlife motif spreads through each chapter, seducing the reader from Happy Hour to the humbling haze of I Am Going To Have To Take Your Keys. Her voice is spiked in irony, almost a slight resignation to the catastrophes of the world and the souls of those residing in it, but not quite, as a second and third read reveals the compassion and haunting effort it takes to try to make sense of the things we will never understand as it was meant to be: death, politics, suffering, and love, and our guilt in relation to them. Her words can serve up quite the cocktail of dichotomies, read Hansel. Her language and tone flits from fun and feeling good to unease in the conditions in which they are surrounded. “Happiness After Grief…feels like such a betrayal.” Reading this collection feels a bit like that.

Reviewed by Sky Sanchez