Fate

by Ai

Dramatic monologues by a powerful American poet include the voices of Mary Jo Kopechne, Lenny Bruce, Alfred Hitchcock, Lyndon Johnson, Elvis Presley and others, exposing human evil and self-destruction

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Ai Ogawa (born Florence Anthony) was an American poet who who described herself as 1/2 Japanese, 1/8 Choctaw-Chickasaw, 1/4 Black, 1/16 Irish and as well as Southern Cheyenne and Comanche. She is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. While her poems often contain sex, violence, and other subjects for which she received criticism, she stated during a 1978 interview that she did not view her use of them as gratuitous. About the poems in her first collection, Cruelty, she said: "I wanted people to see how they treated each other and themselves." In 1999 she won the National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems.

Reviews

[Hermella · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Another Frank poetry rec, which I note even though he does not have a Goodreads and will not read this but I just think credit is important

Love Ai's poetry. Her voice is so rough and gritty but lulls you into place slowly, before her last few lines knock the wind out of you. She is so hard hitting, so confident and unafraid to pull the guts and blood and hurt out of the ordinary and familiar. Her poems are so play-like, reading like a soliloquy by characters you know from periphery but for the first time are confessing something to you. She is never specific about location or time but so subtly sets up these settings that feel desolate, familiar, with a distinct atmosphere that still feels partly unknown. Ai's poetry is very unique and special

Favorites were "Go", "Boys and Girls, Lenny Bruce, or Back from the Dead", and "The Cockfighter's Daughter"

[Jeff Crompton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The late Ai inhabited a small, tightly defined corner of the poetry world. Her poems were monologues - character poems. Like many of Randy Newman's songs, each of her poems was "spoken" by a specific person (real or fictional), not by an omniscient narrator or the poet herself. The first poem in this powerful collection is "by" Mary Jo Kopechne:

a car sailed off a bridge
but did not float.
Then the water, the dark grey water,
opened its mouth
and I slid down its throat.
But when it tried to swallow
the man they called my lover and my killer,
it choked and spit him back into your faces.

This is powerful writing.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I liked this book when I put it on my shelf years ago, I no longer do. I don't see poetic movements in the language or content of the poems. And dare I say, if throwing shocking sex and rape into the majority of the poems don't progress the poetic arc of the poems individually or on a book-level, it seems done for the sole purpose of being shocking.

[e · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection still lingers in my mind and I haven’t touched it in almost a year now.
I need to reread for an accurate review but I think the fact that i still remember quite a few is testament to the collection in itself, especially considering i have terrible memory.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now as I cast my line,
tongues of flame
lick the air above my head,
announcing some Pentecost,
or transcendental storm,
but Papa tells me it's only death who's coming
and he's just a mutated brother
who skims the dark floor
of all our troubled waters
and rises now and then to eat the bait.
But once he wrestled me
like Jacob's angel
and I let him win
because he promised resurrection
in some sweeter by-and-by,
and when he comes to me again
I'll pin him down
until he claims me
from the walleye of this hurricane
and takes me
I don't care how,
as long as he just takes me.
But Papa says forget him
and catch what I can,
even if it's just sweet time,
because it's better than nothing,
better even than waiting
in the heavenly deep-freeze,
then he tells me don't move,
don't talk,
and for Chrissakes don't sing,
and I do what he wants,
me, the king of noise,
but in my memories
this country boy is singing,
he's dancing in hte dark
and always will.
-- "The Resurrection of Elvis Presley"

[Melody · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was okay. These poems have really not aged well. She is a good writer but the content in many of them made me uncomfortable in a bad way, not a thoughtful way like you want dark poetry to. No matter. It was a short read.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The first night God created was too weak;
it fell down on its back,
a woman in a cobalt blue dress."

- from "Reunions with a Ghost"

[Evie · Rating 3 out of 5]

intense. not very into her celebrity style persona poems however, the last poem "The Cockfighter's Daughter" was a killer.

[Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything to love and lose in 77 pages

[Katherine Ursel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's still on my Wisconsin bed stand. Really good book.