Dread

by Ai

Overview

A searing collection of poems about America's loss of innocence from the National Book Award-winning author of Vice.

In poems that travel from the horrific flight of a World War II pilot to the World Trade Center attack, from the death of JFK Jr. to the poet's own bastard birth, Ai conjures purity as a distant memory and the knowledge of evil as an "infinite dark night." "An undoubtedly powerful personae."—Publishers Weekly "Ai's cleansing soliloquies give voice to pain both personal and communal....[Dread] presents her most masterfully unnerving works to date."—Booklist  "Dread has the characteristic moral strength that makes Ai a necessary poet."—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393326192
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	124
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ai (1947-2010) is the author of eight books of poetry, including the National Book Award–winning Vice. In 2009 she was named a United States Artist Ford Fellow. She was a professor at Oklahoma State University.

Table of Contents

	Dread	15
	Delusion	22
	Fairy Tale	29
	Relativity	34
	Family	39
	The Saga of Charlie Smith	43
	Disgrace	48
	Greetings Friend	53
	Grandfather Says	59
	The Secret	61
	Intercourse	66
	True Love	69
	Rude Awakening	72
	Gender/Bender	75
	Fifty-three	78
	Passage	81
	Lullaby	83
	The Broker	85
	The Calling	88
	The White Homegirl	90
	The Greenwood Cycle	92
	The Psychic Detective: Identity	101
	The Psychic Detective: Fantasy	105
	The Psychic Detective: Divinity	109
	The Psychic Detective: Destiny	113
	The Psychic Detective: Infinity	118

Editorial Reviews

Dread has the characteristic moral strength that makes Ai a necessary poet. This strength is the real substance of the book. Here is an imagination that has consistently fought its way into the most terrible places of human experience, that has entered the skin not only of the stricken but of those who strike them with an unflinching commitment. We feel in this book, as perhaps never before in Ai's work, the presence of the writer and her anguished condition. It might not be all that useful these days for us to be entering the skin of a sheriff unleashing a race riot. It is illuminating, though, and in fact humanizing, to reflect on the theatricality born of pure indignation that makes such a reading experience possible. One can only feel grief for Ai that the world offers her so much subject matter, but that she has had the courage to confront it again and again is astonishing. — Vijay Seshadri

The New York Times

A delusional woman insists that her long-dead sister perished in the destruction of the World Trade Center; John F. Kennedy Jr. speaks from beyond the grave; a psychic detective tracks a serial killer known as "The Florist"; an adoption broker exalts his dubious trade-these and other striking, violent or baroquely sexual life stories fuel this seventh volume of verse from Ai (Greed; Cruelty), made up (like her others) of dramatic monologues and character-based confessions, in which shocking, pathetic, frustrated or odious figures explain how they came to be the people they are. Ai (who won the National Book Award for 1999's Vice) explores her own Texas African-American heritage along with urban and Native American milieus; she's especially good with disillusioned middle-aged women and traumatized children, whom she ventriloquizes expertly: "Maybe Danny's only playing dead too/ and there's no gash in his head"; "Before I knew what was happening/ pain shot a fiery bullet into my arm." After six books of painful monologues, some readers may find her speakers' language limited, or their situations redundant; many, however, will gravitate to the undoubtedly powerful personae Ai creates, with their gender troubles and criminal pasts, their "inferno of family violence" and "rush/ of promises," and "reparations/ in pounds of flesh." (Apr.) Forecast: Though she may not command the attention she drew in the 1970s, Ai retains a broad, devoted following, reinvigorated by her National Book Award. Look for broad if brief coverage in mainstream venues, perhaps led by her 9/11 poems. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ai, a Lamont Poetry Award winner, continues to purvey her special brand of poetry, addressing everything from a daughter's night out to the burning Twin Towers in blunt, colloquial language. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal