Bravery in writing raw truth
In Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life, acclaimed poetry and fiction author Kim Addonizio lays herself bare — but she also takes aim.
“I hope you will forgive me,” she writes in “Pants on Fire”, an essay largely about being accused of lying in her poetry (because according to some, poetry is supposed to be fact-checkable; who knew?). “I can’t seem to stop telling you everything about me in the lineated memoir of my life. This may be because I’m a woman, which means I am an emotional landmine waiting to be stepped on, a weeping, oversharing harpy whose inner weather fluctuates wildly. And women, as everyone knows, often lack that quality of imagination men have in such abundance.”
It’s brave to be as honest and tart as Addonizio, in the face of the reproach that comes with telling the when you tell the whole truth instead of pretending. This kind of writing flies in the face of our societal preference for curated Instagram feeds and selective Facebook posts. And it will be off-putting to some — but I found it refreshing.
At first, Addonizio’s compact volume reads like an account of debauchery akin to an episode of Girls meets Absolutely Fabulous. But soon, the author’s pain comes into focus. These are the writings of a brave woman. In “Simple Christian Charity”, an essay about her mentally ill, abusive brother, she writes, “Fiction comes partly from scraps of life stitched together in new patterns. Trouble and conflict are its engines, and he is some of the trouble I’ve experienced in my life.” Later, she writes, “What we’re given we use, or else it destroys us.”
But familial pain, drinking too much, emotional instability: these are only part of a writing life. Addonizio sheds light on language, poetry and what it means to be a writer. She’s privileged to lead a creative existence. But don’t say she hasn’t paid the price. We’re just as privileged, as readers, to be trusted with her confessions, designed to make us feel but also to teach us something that isn’t cautionary. She’s not saying, “Don’t be like me”. She’s saying, “If you want to be like me, be valiant. If you want to be a writer, your life will not always be pretty, but it sure will be real.”