Greed

by Ai

Overview

Greed for money, power, sex, and love is the theme of this volume of dramatic monologues by the poet the New York Times Book Review has called "one of the most singular voices of her generation."

Beginning with "Riot Act," a monologue about the Los Angeles uprising in April 1992, Ai explored racial and sexual politics through the voices of diverse characters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393312010
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/17/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	98
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(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.

Editorial Reviews

"Ai is a strong, powerful poet who writes about real things. These are daring, disturbing, ambitious poems that go for the heart of America."

Margaret Atwood

In her fifth book, Ai ( Fate ) imagines and experiences contemporary degrees of American violence: who commits it, who endures it, and who does not. Her poems are narrated by a fairly raunchy cast of public and private people that includes an anonymous looter, Marion Barry, J. Edgar Hoover, a battered wife who finally shoots her husband, and an ice cream man, once molested by his parents, who himself molests children on the job. The violence is physical, sexual, moral; flamboyant or withheld; crafty, or senseless. And the poetry serves to bear witness, not indulge in excess--it is notable, partly, for an austerity. As in her earlier work, the poet's directness of address is an impressively leveling power, laying open complex situations with an odd, unapologetic, sometimes devastating candor: ``I shot him, I say, he beat me,'' reports the abused wife of her husband in ``Finished.'' But there is no redressing an injustice, and nobody can be righteous. The wife concludes, ``I do not tell them how the emancipation from pain / leaves nothing in its place.'' Ai looks for wrongs, and doesn't right them. That isn't easy, and it seems truthful. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly