The Philosopher's Club (1993) is Addonizio's first collection of poetry. This small book of fewer than eighty pages is filled with a diverse collection of poems on topics ranging from death to teenage drinking to the world of Anne Frank, a victim of the Holocaust. Here, too, are poems about aspects of women's lives, including the love a mother feels in carrying her daughter to bed and the realization that as daughters grow up, they also grow away.

Jimmy & Rita (1996) is a verse narrative by Addonizio, focusing on the lives of a young boxer and a prostitute.

Addonizio's collection Tell Me (2000) was nominated for a National Book Award. It is similar to her other collections in that the poems are sometimes based on her own experiences and are very realistic in their subject content, ranging from divorce to love to spending...