The Collected Poems of Ai

by Ai, Yusef Komunyakaa (Introduction By)

Before her untimely death in 2010, Ai, known for her searing dramatic monologues, was hailed as "one of the most singular voices of her generation" (New York Times Book Review). Now for the first time, all eight books by this essential and uniquely American poet have been gathered in one volume.

from "The Cockfighter's Daughter"

I found my father,
face down, in his homemade chili
and had to hit the bowl
with a hammer to get it off,
then scrape the pinto beans
and chunks of ground beef
off his face with a knife.

Genres: Poetry

448 pages, Hardcover

First published February 4, 2013

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

[Δημήτρης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Την Ai Ogawa (1947-2010), για τους φίλους σκέτο Ai, την γνώρισα μέσα από την ανθολογία των εκδόσεων Εξάρχεια «Αμερικανοί ποιητές και ποιήτριες τολμούν» από το μακρινό πλέον 2013.
Η ανθολογία ποιημάτων τη με τίτλο «Τα αιρετικά παραμύθια» κυκλοφόρησε το 2020 από τις εκδόσεις Βακχικόν, σε μετάφραση και επιμέλεια των Βαγγέλη Αλεξόπουλου και Διώνης Δημητριάδου. Στη συλλογή αυτή περιέχονται ποιήματα και από τις οκτώ εκδόσεις της Ai: Cruelty (1973), Killing Floor (1979), Sin (1986), Fate (1991), Greed (1993), Vice (1999), Dread (2003) και No Surrender (2010).
Η Ai ήταν γνωστή για την αφηγηματική της ποίηση και τους μεγάλους μονολόγους της από τις πρώτες της δουλειές ακόμα. Όσο περνούσαν τα χρόνια η γραφή άλλαζε όπως είναι και λογικό, και γινόταν όλο και πιο σκοτεινή. Ιστορίες για αρκετά touchy θέματα για την εποχή της όπως η εκκλησία, η γυναικεία φύση και η γυναικεία αντίδραση, το σεξ, ο δρόμος, μεταξύ άλλων, με έναν ωμό και ταυτόχρονα λυρικό τρόπο. Με εκφράσεις που τη σήμερον ημέρα ίσως να ξένιζαν, αλλά στα ποιήματα της Ai δημιουργούν την ιδανική ατμόσφαιρα για να αποτυπώσουν αυτά που ήθελε να περάσει. Σε κάθε περίπτωση η Ai Ogawa αποτέλεσε μια πολύ μεγάλη προσωπικότητα για την αμερικανική ποίηση, και αυτό αποτυπώνεται και σε αυτή την ανθολογία.

[Xristos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ενώ η Ai Ogawa είναι σπουδαία ποιήτρια και τα ποιήματά της ξεχωριστής δυναμικής, (την έχω μελετήσει εκτενώς), η εδώ ανθολογία σίγουρα δεν περιλαμβάνει τα καλύτερά της ποιήματα και όσο για τη μετάφραση, σε πολλά σημεία χάνει, μοιάζει να μην έχει καμία ροή και δεν αποδίδει ως πρέπει το ξεχωριστό της ύφος και τον ιδιαίτερο ρυθμό της. Παρόλα αυτά, αναμφίβολα είναι πολύ σημαντικό το ότι κυκλοφόρησε μία ανθολογία της στην Ελλάδα εν είδει γνωριμίας μαζί της. Τα δύο αστεράκια, δυστυχώς, λόγω της μάλλον κακής μετάφρασης.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe almost four stars but not quite, 3.7 stars.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 10 of 5 thorns

Damn. The violence and pain is palpable. Through specificity and narrative--some fiction, some based on historical figures--this book re-sensitized me to the horrors that we inflict upon one another, and though she continually uses violence, the fresh images and characters keep the wounds open and bleeding. Though I didn't like all of her books, I appreciated the skill with which she crafted them. It's incredible to see how her tone and style has changed throughout her writing career. She ends with a collection that results in a morbid but hopeful note that we will not surrender to the violences inflicted on us and our fellow humans. A powerful way to end her career. If there was a line, sharp as a knife, between life and death, Ai's poetry is straddling it. Damn.

Trigger warning: this book contains many types of overt violence (sexual, physical, relational, familial, etc.).

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully produced hardback containing all eight of Ai's published collections of poetry in one omnibus volume. The poems here are often harrowing, brutal, unpleasant in their subject matter, but the rhythmic voice of the poet is tremendous. Personally I found that her poetry got better and better in the later collections. The poems grew longer, became story poems, more incisive and precise and yet at the same time more spacious.

Of the eight collections gathered here, the penultimate one, Dread, I found to be the most impressive. The sequence of poems featuring a narrator called 'The Psychic Detective' is truly brilliant, very disturbing and powerful, and ranks among the best examples of crime fiction I have ever read (and I am a Crime Writers Association judge, so I know what I am talking about).

[Andrea Janov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in several chunks, trying to let each collection have it's own room to breathe away from the next collection. Ai is a poet like no other. She pulls poetry back to the days of story telling. Of creating scenes, characters, tales. Often times her poems are dark, always her poems are honest. While I honestly think that having the collected works in one volume is a bit of a disservice to her work (they are screaming to stand alone) it is wonderful that these out of print collections have found a new life and new readers.

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Συγκλονιστικό. Ο μόνος λόγος που δεν βάζω τα πέντε αστεράκια είναι επειδή άργησε αρκετά να με τραβήξει.
Όπως και να 'χει, σίγουρα θα επιστρέψω σε αυτό το βιβλίο. Μπράβο στην επιλογή από τον εκδοτικό οίκο, στους ανθολόγους και μεταφραστές!

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best contemporary poet to ever do it. Affecting beyond words.

[Dionisios Youlatos · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing writing, captivating, modern and true. Verses full of passion and strength.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review on New York Journal of Books first. Additional remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Cruelty, the first of eight books of poetry by the poet whose pen name and legal middle name was Ai and the third anniversary of her death from breast cancer at age 62. Today W.W. Norton is publishing all eight of her poetry books in one volume as The Collected Poems of Ai. In my review of the book in New York Journal of Books I note that at a time when most American poetry was autobiographical Ai wrote dramatic monologues in other people's voices.

In his introduction to the book poet Yusef Komunyakaacompares Ai's dramatic approach to that of a method actor. Another analogy for the way Ai inhabited other people's voices and roles would be the one woman shows of Anna Deavere Smith.

Ai's poems are not to everyone's taste. If you prefer the Rolling Stones to the Beatles, Howling Wolf to Muddy Waters, the gritty realism (including graphic violence and strong sexual content) of HBO's Sunday night original series to PBS' British dramas you'll probably enjoy Ai's poetry; if not, stay with safer, tamer, less edgy poets. But even if you're fond of her poems you'll probably want to pace yourself at just a few at a time because of their frequent and brutal violence.

Ai is drawn to the shocking and perverse. She quotes the Rolling Stone's song "Gimme Shelter" in her poem"The Mortician's Twelve-Year-Old Son," a poem whose depiction of necrophilia one could imagine dramatized on HBO. In my NYJB review I quote "The Kid" as an example of graphic violence in Ai's work. In "Knockout" Mike Tyson’s rape of Desiree Washington is discussed by an inner city sex worker who has no empathy for Ms. Washington. In “Why Can’t I Leave You?” Ai addresses marriage and sexuality in the context of rural poverty from the wife's perspective.

Quite a few of Ai's poems are in the voices of villains. She lets the bad guy tell his side of the story and in so doing he incriminates himself. "The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981" is in the voice of a serial killer (see video). In "Kristallnacht," a four part six and a half page poem, the speaker is a half French half German former Nazi collaborator. The poem's final couplet is haunting: "Pretend I died for nothing/instead of living for it."

In “Life Story,” another six and a half page poem, the speaker is a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse, and in “Family Portrait, 1960” the speaker is the poet’s step-father whom her bed-ridden mother asks to supervise eleven year old Florence and her seven year old half sister Roslynn as they shower instructing them to “scrub your little pussies.”

History is a recurring theme in Ai's work with poems in the voices of Leon Trotsky, J. Robert Oppenheim, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Jimmy Hoffa, J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro, Presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Clinton and George W. Bush, among others as well as lesser known figures. Ezra Pound defined an epic as a "poem including history." The Collected Poems of Ai is an everyman and woman's The Cantos for the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Centuries.

[Drunken_orangetree · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early poems especially are chilling, but intensely evocative accounts of limit experiences.