My Black Angel

Kim Addonizio’s latest collection of poetry, My Black Angel Blues Poems and Portraits, is an amazing work; featuring woodcuts by book artisan Charles D. Jones, My Black Angel is both an auditory pleasure and visual feast. First, Addonizio’s poetry celebrates the blues tradition in poetry much the way Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar did; she understands, feels, knows blues rhythms and the result is an incomparable and important poetry. Furthermore, Jones’ accompanying art encompasses the blues medium and personalities Addonizio so aptly employs in her poetry: edgy and surprising, multifaceted with concurrent streams of meaning, his woodcuts feature such blues personalities as Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Billie Holliday, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton, and more. The concert resultant from this collaboration is a dynamic performance bound to turn readers’ attentions to the music and tradition of the blues, to seek out the sources, to immerse in the blues.