Kim Addonizio Weapons Poem Analysis

Michlynn Hynes

Professor Victoria Murray

Expository Writing

4 April 2023

Kim Addonizio's "Weaponry" Explication

To have a better understanding of Kim Addonizio's poem “weaponry” I first looked into her background. Kim Addonizio's father was a sports journalist, which gave her insight into the literary world. Kim Addonizio has earned several prizes for her writing, including Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Pushcart Prize, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. Kim not only writes poetry, but also writes books and novels, dabbles in fiction and nonfiction, plays the harmonica, and writes and composes music. As of right now, she organizes poetry workshops and conference readings, as can be seen on

In the poem she mentions utilizing various techniques of violence to kill various species of insects and animals at the start of the poem. Through the short she exaggerates the brutal tactics, then speaks about love and how she'd use the same harsh methods to burn love at the end. On the poetry foundation website “Weaponry” is categorized as a love and relationship poem. With that information it's telling me that this is a love poem, this poem portrays a destructive relationship between Kim Addonizio and her love life. With evidence from her biography stating “Addonizio is wise and crafty in her observations and her portrayal of sensual love, filial feeling, death or loss.(Kim Addonizio)” Kim's ability to include her portrayal of love is perceived as her hatred for

The primary message is difficult to portray in the poem's structure, but she pulls everything together in the end to form a surprisingly deep conclusion. The poet creates this meaning by enticing the reader with hyperboles, imagery, and symbolism. The poem begins, "I used an arrow to kill the spider." "I flattened the worm with a steamroller" (Addonizio Weaponry). By stating this, she conveys the idea that she is a pivotal person who exaggerates the littlest things. Kim’s use of hyperbole is essential to the poem because it shows what her strong emotions are towards love in the end. The hyperbole is evident in all of the over-the-top theatrical measures she made to kill the animals and insects; a regular person would swat or just stomp on a bug to destroy it, but Kim utilized over dramatic strategies to demonstrate how strongly she feels about little concerns. In this statement “a bucket of water for submerging the cat, a poisoned word thrown to the dog” you can feel the aggression she is giving off. And when Kim gets to the conclusion of the poem and speaks about love, she uses the same harsh methods to demolish it. Kim was attempting to eliminate love as if it were a simple small insect or animal. Kim's use of hyperbole conveys her powerful feelings in a way that the viewer can