Kim Addonizio

One kind of writing prompt I’ve given my students is to take a quote by some artist or thinker and respond to it. I’m not sure why I was thinking about Paris in the first place, but that led me to De Beauvoir and Sartre and I started reading a bunch of their quotes online. So I had those two elements early on. As for the cat, I would have liked to write about him exclusively but I knew better than to put most of what I wrote into the poem.

Rather than a single early draft--since I can't even define what, exactly, a "draft" is, as the iterations are constantly shifting--I'd like to light down on some moments and share some early language I entertained before, fortunately, kicking it out and inviting in the final poem. So here goes, starting with the final version, so you can see what didn't make the cut.

< final version >

Existential Elegy

from Exit Opera, W.W. Norton, September 2024

< edits >

Alternate Titles

Paris
Uncertainty Principle
Existential Cat Sonnet
Situation with Philosopher & Cat
Self-Portrait with Philosophers, Pastry Chef, Laundress, & Cat
Existential Self-Portrait
Existentialists at the Deux Magots

Alternate Beginnings

My first time in Paris it was February

Remember that first time in Paris, at the train station, the croissants
piled high in a basket on the table? We thought they were free until the waiter showed up.

I never read The Second Sex
or if I did, I forgot it. But I remember my first time in Paris.  It was February

Alternate Cemetery Under Snow

it was February & snowing, hours until I could check into my hotel

It was February & snowing. Great thoughts drifted down & disappeared.

it was February & snowing. I wandered through Montparnasse
as great thoughts drifted down & disappeared.

while great important thoughts drifted from the sky
& disappeared.

drifted from the clouds & disappeared. Then the clouds disappeared
& I got old.

The dead
drifted toward me & disappeared.

Alternate Cat

& about to disappear Look at you. All I can think about is the other cat.

I remember how the other cat would let me carry him around
draped over my head. This one refuses to be picked up, but nuzzles into my armpit
& purrs.

He was black,
& light shone through the tips of his ears as I held him & the Fentanyl kicked in.

Alternate Endings

A poet once said every elegy ends
in consolation, or a refusal of consolation, or an even deeper grief. Once you crushed
a ripe peach in your hand

or a refusal of consolation, or an even deeper & therefore more awful grief
said a poet once.

All I can think is
is how you once
crushed a peach in your hand

That’s where this one wants to leave you, reader, deep
down in the hole I’ve dug for us.