Vice: New and Selected Poems

Rating:
Summary: NO, SHE DIDN'T DESERVE IT!
Review: Ai is the first poet who ever meant anything to me, and this book is testament to her greatest strengths. It's a pleasure to watch her early poems develop into the dramatic monologues for which she is known. Ai is savage and compassionate--a great combination in a poet--but don't reduce her poems into a summary of subject matter. Her attention to the line and to real human voices make this a book you'll never want to loan.

Rating:
Summary: I've read worse poetry, but....
Review: I wish I could say something nice about this collection, which inexplicably won a National Book Award. Most of the poems (particularly the later ones) take the form of what the book jacket calls "dramatic monologues," in which the poet thinks her way into the minds of various political/pop culture icons (and sometimes just ordinary folk). Unfortunately, Ai lacks the insight to say anything particularly fresh or even interesting about her subjects; poems like "The Paparazzi" and "Hoover, Edgar J." are painfully trite. The poet's apparent lack of sympathy for her subjects tends to lead her into heavy-handedness. Worse, she has an erratic ear, resulting sometimes in weird clunkers: "come close between my thighs/and let me laugh for you from my second mouth." The poet is also excessively fond of having her characters describe themselves getting killed, a bizarre motif that pops up ad nauseam. Here we have Leon Trotsky, who continues prattling on even as his head is split open with an axe ("my head fell to one side, hanging only by skin"). Here's James Dean, who gives us the gory details of his car crash: "My head nearly tore from my neck/my bones broke into fragments." Other poems deal predictably with a host of sociopolitical figures: Nixon, the Kennedys, Joe McCarthy, O.J. Simpson, and so on. Before long, the poems begin sounding remarkably alike. This kind of ripped-from-the-headlines poetry tends to be ephemeral, and I don't think this volume is any exception. Even the very best poems here are no better than competent. The most I can say for this volume is that it makes for fairly breezy reading... but don't expect much.

Rating:
Summary: Vice with Virtue
Review: Narrative, unique, and some of the best poetics being written today. Ai proves once again she's a force to let sweep over you. An work of infinite virtue & genius.

Rating:
Summary: Vice with Virtue
Review: Narrative, unique, and some of the best poetics being written today. Ai proves once again she's a force to let sweep over you. An work of infinite virtue & genius.

Rating:
Summary: political, entertaining, brilliant
Review: Of course these hard, odd, daring poem-stories make people mad. They're about real things and real people, not just the poet thinking deep-thoughts-with-metaphors at her studio window. Ai sympathises with bad characters, has no patience for prettified lyrics or faux deep-thinking, talks fast and colloquially, with intrusions of odd syntax. The imagery is full of startle and reality; the language is harsh, the poet's heart big. This poetry is a whole other world, outside of anything anyone else is doing. If you don't like this stuff you really don't like poetry.

Rating:
Summary: no vice in owning this book...
Review: one of the strongest, most dynamic poetic voices i've ever encountered. i love writers that go into the dark without fear. ai finds america in many voices; he strongest assets are her knack for imagery and details. she also knows how to create personas that cause you to become engrossed in their lives even if you don't like them. critics who claim ai's poetry isn't " poetic enough " are helplessly bound to their own rigid definitions of poetry. this woman " goes there " over and over again...

Rating:
Summary: Bad things happen to bad people
Review: The language is plain and they are easy to understand. If you took away the line breaks they could be read as straight prose. I could not detect any rhythmic or prosodic pattern. They are straightforward imaginary confessions - sort of Joyce Carol Oates mini-horror stories. The bad guys are rather standard liberal targets. It is readable and I found myself turning the pages and keeping on reading which is more than I can say for more edifying and esoteric poetry.

Rating:
Summary: political, entertaining, brilliant
Review: winning the national book award alone is good enough reason to pick this collection up. "Child Beater" is another. Ai's early poems are without a doubt her best work. as she got older, her poems just lost most of the skill she exhibited in her earlier collection.