My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits

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.