31 Year Old Lover Poem Analysis

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In Kim Addonizio’s poem, 31-Year Old Lover, Addonizio introduces two characters, a 31-year old man and an older woman. At first I thought the man was her lover but really the 31-year old man is just someone who has a nice body as Addonizio describes in the poem and as the author portrays the older woman in the poem as being young and it is her way to contrast it with the process of the woman becoming old and weary. The last line in the poem Addonizio says to do with aging is, “I am going to have it back the only way I can” (1398), and it seems the only way she can get her youth back is trying to take his youth by sleeping with him. Addonizio, views the male body in a sexual way that as Addonizio quotes, “When he takes off his clothes/ the milky, lubricious of butter being unwrapped/ when its take from the fridge still hard”. (1398) Addonizio is comparing the man to a “stick of butter being unwrapped”. The comparison to the man and butter is how hard the butter is when you first pull it out the fridge and his penis is what is hard and what she wants. Throughout the poem Addonizio uses many different words describing the 31-year-old man’s body and the description that she uses serves as a glorification of the man. By calling his body “lubricious smoothness”, the author is implying the 31-year old man’s body is something that the woman craves for. Addonizio’s description that she is giving throughout the poem is that she is glorifying the 31-year old man. She is talking