Quotes from Kim Addonizio

The artists who copied Rembrandt did so to learn about painting, not to be lesser versions of the master. They imitated as a way of looking closely, and then used what they had learned to develop their own work, brushstroke by brushstroke. Line by line, you can do the same.

Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implications outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.

and it's starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

I'll wear it like bones, like skin, it'll be the goddamn dress they'll bury me in.

On whatever level you are presently concerned with death (and we assume you are; after all, death is concerned with you), you should feel free to write about it.

Reading is like food to a writer; without it, the writer part of you will die—or become spindly and stunted.

The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language: I love my brother, I hate winter, I always lose my keys.

Someone will pull you from the fire, someone else wrap you in flame. -The Givens

You were the two insect parts per million allowed in peanut butter.

How pure your longing to be anything other than yourself.

Poetry is a reflection of our lives and our imaginations, so it would seem that some of our best and most important poetry would be on this subject.

I'm just going to have one last blackout in a dirty pink lace dress

Sometimes it's enough just to say their names like a rosary, ordinary names linked by nothing but the fact that they belong to men who loved you.