Life Stories #85: Kim Addonizio

I didn't realize until well into my conversation with Kim Addonizio that she'd written (but never published) a full-length memoir, a straightforward narrative about the breakup of a longterm relationship, before Bukowski in a Sundress, the collection of autobiographical essays that we'd met to discuss. That got us to talking about rejection and failure, which dovetailed nicely into some of the larger themes we'd been pursuing about finding the right voice for each of these essays—some of which deal with personal relationships, some of which tackle the writing process, some of which play directly with her reputation as a "confessional" poet—and about claiming her space as a woman dealing with all the things women have to deal with in literary culture.