Poets Kim Addonizio and Susan Browne talk with Frederick W. Marrazzo about the glory of poetry and their CD “Swearing, Smoking, Drinking and Kissing” which combines music with poetry.
A Poem by Kim Addonizio: Generations
(From the collection “Tell Me, poems by Kim Addonizio”, BOA Editions LTD, Rochester, NY, 2000)
Somewhere a shop of hanging meats,
shop of stink and blood, block and cleaver;
somewhere an immigrant, grandfather, stranger
with my last name. That man
untying his apron in 1910, scrubbing off
the pale fat, going home past brownstones
and churches, past vendors, streetcars, arias,
past the clatter of supper dishes, going home
to his new son, my father–
What is he to me, butcher with sausage fingers,
old Italian leaning over a child somewhere
in New York City, somewhere alive, what is he
that I go back to look for him, years after his death
and my father’s death, knowing only
a name, a few scaps my father fed me?
My father who shortened that name, who hacked off
three lovely syllables, who raised American children.
What is the past to me
that I have to go back, pronouncing that word
in the silence of a cemetery, what is this stone
coming apart in my hands like bread, name
I eat and expel? Somewhere the smell of figs
and brine, strung garlic, rosemary and olives;
somewhere that place. Somewhere a boat
rocking, crossing over, entering the harbor. I wait
on the dock, one face in a crowd of faces.
Families disembark and stream toward the city,
and though I walk among them for hours,
hungry, haunting the streets,
I can’t tell which of them is mine.
Somewhere a steak is wrapped in thick paper,
somewhere my grandmother is laid in the earth,
and my young father shines shoes on a corner,
turning his back to the Old World, forgetting.
I walk the night city, looking up at lit windows,
and there is no table set for me, nowhere
I can go to be filled. This is the city
of grandparents, immigrants, arrivals,
where I’ve come too late with my name,
and empty plate. This is the place.
(From the collection “Tell Me, poems by Kim Addonizio”, BOA Editions LTD, Rochester, NY, 2000)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Drinking, Kim Addonizio, Kissing, poetry, Smoking, Susan Browne, Swearing, Tell Me
