Feb

18

Book ‘Em: Sinful.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

February 18, 2008 |

aisin.jpgThe dramatic monologue is one of poetry’s most powerful forms, and in her third book of poems, Sin, the poet Ai adds to the tradition with extremely powerful but at the same time difficult dramatic monologues. The book won her an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and opens with Two Brothers, an eerie series of monologues in which John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy speak to each other from beyond the grave. This is followed by dramatic monologues by Joe McCarthy, Francisco Pizarro, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and even Salome. Written primarily in short, terse lines, Ai’s poetry is dense with dark imagery and quiet revelations, such as the quietly brutal end of the poem Kristallnacht:

Pretend I died for nothing

instead of living for it.

Ai herself has lived, and lived well, continuing to write powerful books of poetry (her book Vice won the 1999 National Book Award For Poetry). Ai is not her birth name, but means “love” in Japanese. As she explained in an interview, “Ai is my middle name. My father was Japanese. And my mother is Choctaw Indian, southern Cheyenne, black, Dutch and Irish. They love the Irish part. They never talk much about the Dutch part. So I’m truly all American, you know.”


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