Breaking Form Selects: The Poet Ai -- (A Summer Poetry Salon)
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Breaking Form Selects: The Poet Ai -- (A Summer Poetry Salon)
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Narrated by:
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Written by:
Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Ai
Support Breaking Form by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts here.
Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.
Notes:
The poet Ai was noted for her uncompromising poetic vision and dramatic monologues which give voice to marginalized, poor, and abused speakers. She legally changed her name to Ai which means “love” in Japanese. Ai self-identified as Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche. Her collections include: Cruelty (1973), Killing Floor (1978), Sin (1986), Fate (1991), Greed (1993), Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999) which was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry, and Dread (2003).
Read more about her (as well as poems by her) here.
Read her obituary in the New York Times here, and this recollection essay by Tamiko Beyer in Kenyon Review here.
Watch Ai read from her first book here (~6 min; recording made in November 1974).
We discussed Ai in our episode "We Can Shift the Canon"
Poems we read by Ai include:
"The Hitchhiker" - hear Ai read it here.
"Twenty-Year Marriage"
"James Dean"
"True Love"