Description: A new collection from the author of Jimmy & Rita examines the often tangled ties that connect us to those we love. Poems of loneliness, late nights & loss.

ForeWord Magazine Review: Addonizio's tough-girl persona winds through the late-night bars, the abusive relationships, the strip joints, cigarettes, and discarded clothing of Tell Me with an exquisite world-weariness, and even the poems are crafted using the techniques of repetition. Pantoums and anaphoras enforce the sense that this life continues night after night, unchanging: "You turn away. I remember again/ the first time you turned toward me,/ knocking over your glass./ We sat at a table, getting drunk.// The first time you turned toward me/ I knew this moment would come:/ two people getting drunk at a table,/ getting it over with. And though// I knew this moment would come/ I couldn't help kissing you" This excerpt from "Spill" could work as a précis for a book that mourns even as it celebrates self-destructive desire and its addictive thrall.

The spiraling inward of the search Addonizio documents nearly always collapses into pain, perhaps too predictably; the poems succeed best when a twist subve...

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