No Surrender

September 27, 2010
A master of the dramatic monologue in her last book, Ai, who died in March 2010, dives into the minds and memories of a diverse array of characters, both fictional and non. The characters include Elizabeth Custer, the outspoken wife of the general in the Civil War; a young man who is raped by his roommate after a graduation celebration turns to debauchery; Manesh, a scholar of philosophy from New Delhi who is nearly suffocating in a box aboard ship, smuggling himself to America. Despite their differences, these characters all channel Ai's own voice and concerns. In "Fatherhood," a part-Irish woman fantasizes about fitting in at an Irish street fair. "The Hunt" involves an interracial marriage with a prominent woman named Florence. Several of the poems explore the speakers' troubled relationship to others—mainly family: "We fathers, sons brothers, uncles, and husbands,/ Confused and Sputtering into our glasses, Paralyzed by what passes for living/ In the age of terror and misgiving." This book makes a powerful conclusion to an important poet's career.

August 1, 2010

Ai (1947-2010) established her reputation, with seven books in 35 years, by giving voice, through dramatic monologs, to the famous and infamous, the marginalized and alienated. With this posthumous collection, she ventures closer to home; one cannot help but sense similarities to her own biography among the occasionally outlandish embellishments. The people who speak these poems are odd, curious, and yet so strikingly familiar, so right. A disillusioned nun moves to America from Ireland, meets Elvis, and rediscovers her faith; a pregnant young woman searches her desert home for the rattlesnake that haunts her; a woman confronts her mother's self-destructive addiction. A double amputee named Ulysses goes on a remarkable journey through a hurricane, while a New York taxi driver tells us: "I was smuggled to America/ inside a ship's container." These are the words of common people, with unique American lives, American dreams, and, sadly, American nightmares. "I am part Southern/ Cheyenne as well as black, Irish, German and half/ Japanese," a speaker (reminiscent of Ai herself) recounts her ancestry, "which doesn't please him." VERDICT Ai has brought a new vitality to the long-forgotten monolog, reason enough for anyone interested in contemporary poetry to read this book. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/10.]--Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2010
The title of Ais eighth and final collection is a bittersweet battle cry, given her death at age 62 in March 2010. Born Florence Anthony, the National Book Awardwinning poet of Japanese, African American, Choctaw, and Irish descent who changed her name to Ai, which means love in Japanese, gave voice to a diverse array of voices in indelible dramatic monologues. Here her signature form is a vessel for concentrated yet complex and suspenseful stories, wrenching or liberating confessions. We hear from reluctant parents and children struggling with cruelty, lies, and chaos; an on-again, off-again Irish nun who meets Elvis in Las Vegas; and a young man traumatized by a rape he cannot remember. Venturing into the history of American racial oppression and genocide, Ai empathically portrays Elizabeth Custer, the infamous generals wife. A few of these technically brilliant and emotionally devastating soliloquies offer glimpses into the poets life and, in the staggering The Cancer Chronicles, her death. Let Ais books preserve her compassion and righteous anger, her artistry and profound sense of the paradoxes of human existence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)