I don't travel well. Even the biweekly drives back home wipe me out, and the three trips in the last month have left me dreadfully behind in nearly everything. This brief review, finally posted at CDBaby, should have been done a month ago.
I make poems and music — I've even made a (very) little money at each — and I generally don't like music to accompany words not written to be sung. Kim Addonizio and Susan Browne's Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing is a wonderful exception. I love Stephen Herrick's saxophone on Susan Browne's "Let Us Live Only for Passion" and on Kim Addonizio's frightening poems "Lush Life" and "'Round Midnight," and 'Little Lola' Addonizio's own harmonica on "Blues for Robert Johnson." Sofa/Noel Cross's guitar is especially good on Browne's "Full Moon, Cabo San Lucas" and "Star Food Sonata," and on Addonizio's "Prayer."
Unaccompanied poems by both are mixed in as well, and the two poets take turns, sometimes within a poem, sometimes alternating poems or mini-sets of poems, skillfully mixing funny or touching material amid very dark work — most of that last to do with alcohol. The CD has a surprising unity, almost the feel of a narrative, while still managing to leave each poem its own identity. Some favorites beyond those already mentioned: the two of them reading Dorianne Laux's "Kissing"; Addonizio's "What Do Women Want?" (with Browne's enthusiastic interuptions), "Kisses," and "Augury"; Browne's "Bio to the Age of 30 with Men, Alcohol, and Drugs," "Those Nights," "Genesis," and "Small Pleasures, Great Sweetness."
More catching up in the next few days, I hope.
8:50:44 PM 
|
|
