Killing Floor

by Ai

Poetry. In 1978, Killing Floor was awarded the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. The book was selected by Charles Wright, Maxine Kumin, and Philip Levine.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

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

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

She's incredible, devastating and lyrical. Her poem for Lope de Aguirre, which closes the book, is worth the price by itself.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interested to see from the comments here that a few people still discover Ai's poems, although I think if more young poets read this work, it would have a wide ranging effect.

I remember in the 70s, the thing people commented on was the violence of these poems. The murders. The sexual violence. The blood. But Ai's use of the personae, that she would enter the characters in her poems at such intimate places, received nothing but praise. I think those positions would be completely reversed now. I don't think too many readers would have trouble with the violence anymore. We've seen much more graphic examples in the years since--perhaps an approach to subject matter pioneered by Ai, even though many of the practitioners now don't even know her work, work that liberated them. I think the complete absorption in her characters might cause comment now. People might question her "right" to assume these identities, or think that she used persona so much as a way of disguising her own identity.

Of course, these criticisms, either 45 years ago or yesterday, are all silly. Her movement into persona is a brave jump into other lives. She doesn't feel the need to provide any context, whether the life she's in is famous (Trotsky, Mishima, Monroe, Ira Hayes, etc.) or obscure (Mexican revolutionaries, etc.). I suspect these lives come to her through some study, some reading, maybe a lot or perhaps even one good history.

And the blood? Yes, that is almost certainly a reflection of something in her own character, some need for catharsis. But it also seems right to the situations she has chosen for her poems. It does make them cinematic and memorable.

So if there is any obscurity in the poems, it is in this lack of context. But she has a very good ear for that, I think, knowing what her readers don't know and letting the poem take shape around that. The language is very direct. Almost unadorned. The lines are clean and undemanding. For the most part the poems seem completely self-contained. I wonder what notes or more hand-holding would add to these? It might tie the poems too closely to history, make the readers think they are not enough.

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life is changed after reading Ai! Blown away by her kickass power in words!
(A Dream In Two Parts)

1.
Night, that old woman, jabs the sun
with a pitchfork,
and dyes the cheesecloth sky blue-violet,
as I sit at the kitchen table,
bending small pieces of wire in hoops.
You come in naked.
No. Do it yourself.

2.
I'm a nine-year-old girl
skipping beside a single hoop of daylight.
I hear your voice.
I start running. You lift me in your arms.
I holler. The little girl turns.
Her hoop rolls out of sight.
Something warm seeps through my gown onto my belly.
She never looks back."

[SmarterLilac · Rating 5 out of 5]

If loving the poetry of Ai is wrong, I don't want to be right.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

1/3, March 2020: I only permitted myself the indulgence of reading the last poem aloud -- the truth is, every piece in here wants to grab you by the throat, to both throttle and exsanguinate you, and to then write the poem with the leavings of your spit and blood, only maybe saying sorry. I am fascinated by the masks and masking in these dramatic monologues, the form Ai said she was herself most captivated by, most passionately drawn to use. I feel she uses them strangely, fiercely, without remorse.

2/3, January 2021: Of course I'm beginning the year with Ai. How else, but the throat notched with cruel rivers? How else, but with the blade in the handbasket and the rifle of flowers in the vase?

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fierce, dark, imaginative, frightening, kinetic poems. The poet is not afraid of intensity. I read this in an edition that included Ai's book, "Cruelty."

[Zi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems in Ai's Killing Floor are good on their own, but as an overall collection I find the book a little wanting. The book might have benefited from sections where Ai could expand more on the themes in certain sequences—because I believe there are poems in here that clearly go together and/or continue a narrative—but because the poems are arranged the way they are, the collection feels a bit all over the place and seems to change its main purpose/concept/basis throughout.

I definitely prefer Ai's Cruelty over Killing Floor, but the writing itself is good; however, if I continue reading Ai, I hope to see more personal/intimate poems rather than purely persona poems. I appreciated the narrative in Cruelty, but in Killing Floor the persona poem after persona poem was kind of overwhelming, especially considering how the book would jump from one perspective to the other and one situation to the next completely unrelated situation.

I didn't have any objective or subjective issues with Ai's subject matter; dark poetry is called dark for a reason. I don't believe she wrote these poems purely for shock value; I believe she wanted to hold a dark mirror up to the face of the "civilized" world by exposing harmful dynamics and everyday cruelties, particularly in regards to men and women and the nuclear family.

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stab myself in the belly,
wait, then stab myself again. Again.
It's snowing. I'll turn to ice,
but I'll burn anyone who touches me.
I start pulling my guts out,
those red silk cords,
spiraling skyward,
and I'm climbing them
past the moon and the sun,
past darkness
into white.
I mean to live.
-- "Nothing But Color (For Yukio Mishima)"

The Russians burned their crops,
rather than feed our army.
Now they strike us against each other like dry rocks
and set us on fire with a hunger
nothing can feed.
Someone calls me and I look up.
It's Hitler.
I imagine eating his terrible, luminous eyes.
Brother, he says.
I stand up, tie the rags tighter around my feet.
I hear my footsteps running after me,
but I am already gone.
-- "The German Army, Russia, 1943"

I am the fishes, the five loaves.
-- "The Gilded Man"

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sparse, scary little book... Ai's use of clipped present tense to get into her characters' perspectives is unique and feels pretty masterful. Though she frequently jumps across different perspectives and timelines (throughout the book and often within individual poems), it doesn't feel choppy or disjointed. Her technique gives readers a real and visceral feeling for the flow of history and all of its horrors.

Killing Floor is darker, more brutal and more direct than most contemporary poetry, which in some ways feels refreshing. I wasn't quite as absorbed by this one as I thought I'd be, as her terse writing style does tend to keep the reader at a bit of a remove, but her voice is undeniably forceful. Will definitely be circling back to pick up Cruelty!

[Em H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an interesting collection. Composed of (mostly?) persona poems, Ai drew out such tangible, physical responses from me. Maybe it's because I live in TX, but I felt the heat of these poems. The sweat and the blood and the unrelenting weather. I haven't experienced this type of reaction from a poetry collection in some time. I also enjoyed (though that might be the wrong word) the violence of these poems.

There's just something relentless about this collection. It includes POVs from folks we don't see reflected in poetry often. Definitely one to reread.

[Andrew Squitiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am very happy I was able to find a copy of an actual book of hers, such as this (most of what's available are selections and collections). Beautiful vignettes into specific moments and people, yet somehow universal.

[Ellie Appelgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing. Her use of metaphor, juxtaposition, and religious allusions are unlike any other. The basis of the book uniting many different types of suffering illustrates the cyclical nature of the human condition.

[remi s · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful fantastic amazing!!! Love how she treats time, how she looks into history... so gory and good. Want to think more about her use of personas...

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Japan isn’t sliding into the Pacific
this cool April morning, you are.”

::

Haunting, gruesome. This line is somehow the best line I’ve ever read. The poems about Japaneseness are vengeful in the way only a multiracial diasporic Nikkei could write. Her poems are also kinda gay idk.

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the ideas behind this collection more than I liked the poems themselves.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 A288k 1979

[Evan]

"ICE

breaks up in obelisks on the river,
as I stand beside your grave.
I tip my head back.
Above me, the same sky you loved,
that shawl of cotton wool,
frozen around the shoulders of Minnesota.
I'm cold and so far from Texas
and my father, who gave me to you.
I was a twelve, a Choctaw, a burden.
A woman, my father said, raising my skirt.
Then he showed you the roll of green gingham,
stained red, that I'd tried to crush to powder
with my small hands."