Customer Reviews

Vice: New and Selected Poems

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is an amazing collection of Ai's poetry. She deservedly won the National Book Award for this book. Her poetry touches political and social issues head on and she doesn't back down from her beliefs. Her passion speaks for itself.
Her language is easy, conversational. In Blood in the Water, Ai writes in reaction to a very public and very political affair, "My granddaddy told me a man is nothing but appetite/ sandwiched between his wife and mean lust./ I have a deep affection for my wife,..." There is a familiar comfort in the way she writes. This is poetry that affects and is effective.
Ai writes with her soul. Her "New Poems" are real to our time, but the earlier works are timeless. Her work, The Gilded Man, is inspired by events from 1561. It reads as if she were there to witness the killing and deaths that happened. She writes of "start[ing] with his feet and giv[ing] them to you to wear as earrings." and it feels like she is there ready to dismember the enemy.
Some of her works have the feel of Edwidge Danticat's Krik Krak. Ai, like Danticat, deals with the sufferings of African American people and their ability to overcome hardships. Ai's poem, Cuba, is that particularly reminds me of Danticat's works. Ai casually talks about death and giving back to the earth as if it's second nature.
Overall, Ai's Vice is a wonderful collection of poems that are eternal, current and touching in some way or another. The comfortable familiarity of her writing style makes this an easy read, while her passion and beliefs make the book moving and powerful. This collection was deserving of the Award and Ai's work is an amazing reminder that there are modern poets that can still touch us like Hughes and Whitman and Eliot.

Ai is the first poet who ever meant anything to me, and this book is testament to her greatest strengths. It's a pleasure to watch her early poems develop into the dramatic monologues for which she is known. Ai is savage and compassionate--a great combination in a poet--but don't reduce her poems into a summary of subject matter. Her attention to the line and to real human voices make this a book you'll never want to loan.

Ai writes dramatic monologues, and persona poems. Thematically, her poems will break your nose, knock your teeth out, and leave you feeling slightly off kilter...her unflinching honesty, imagination, and sheer brutality are unsettling, maddening, and ultimately a mark of brillaince...

Of course these hard, odd, daring poem-stories make people mad. They're about real things and real people, not just the poet thinking deep-thoughts-with-metaphors at her studio window. Ai sympathises with bad characters, has no patience for prettified lyrics or faux deep-thinking, talks fast and colloquially, with intrusions of odd syntax. The imagery is full of startle and reality; the language is harsh, the poet's heart big. This poetry is a whole other world, outside of anything anyone else is doing. If you don't like this stuff you really don't like poetry.

One cannot deny Ai's excellence in immersing the reader into the poem with such dizzying and detailed imagery. Many of her poems (not all however) tend to hit the reader hard, and this should be the goal for every poet. However, the reason why I am not giving this the full five stars is because after reading several of her poems, one can quickly see a pattern emerging. Not a pattern of theme or imagery, but a pattern of structure, which does become monotonous after several hours of reading. The biggest reason why I couldn't give this the full five stars is because, even though she writes beautiful words, her words lack soul to keep the reader guessing. I do recommend this book, but don't be surprised if you only read it once and it sits on your shelf for the rest of time.

No one deserves this prize more than this outstanding collection of poetry by one of America's most original and powerful poets. Ai's work is violent and sometimes not easy to read--she's a prophet and a scribe, speaking truths with the voice of unflinching authority and writing them down without compromise. An absolutely superb gathering of her work.

I wish I could say something nice about this collection, which inexplicably won a National Book Award. Most of the poems (particularly the later ones) take the form of what the book jacket calls "dramatic monologues," in which the poet thinks her way into the minds of various political/pop culture icons (and sometimes just ordinary folk). Unfortunately, Ai lacks the insight to say anything particularly fresh or even interesting about her subjects; poems like "The Paparazzi" and "Hoover, Edgar J." are painfully trite. The poet's apparent lack of sympathy for her subjects tends to lead her into heavy-handedness. Worse, she has an erratic ear, resulting sometimes in weird clunkers: "come close between my thighs/and let me laugh for you from my second mouth." The poet is also excessively fond of having her characters describe themselves getting killed, a bizarre motif that pops up ad nauseam. Here we have Leon Trotsky, who continues prattling on even as his head is split open with an axe ("my head fell to one side, hanging only by skin"). Here's James Dean, who gives us the gory details of his car crash: "My head nearly tore from my neck/my bones broke into fragments." Other poems deal predictably with a host of sociopolitical figures: Nixon, the Kennedys, Joe McCarthy, O.J. Simpson, and so on. Before long, the poems begin sounding remarkably alike. This kind of ripped-from-the-headlines poetry tends to be ephemeral, and I don't think this volume is any exception. Even the very best poems here are no better than competent. The most I can say for this volume is that it makes for fairly breezy reading... but don't expect much.

one of the strongest, most dynamic poetic voices i've ever encountered. i love writers that go into the dark without fear. ai finds america in many voices; he strongest assets are her knack for imagery and details. she also knows how to create personas that cause you to become engrossed in their lives even if you don't like them. critics who claim ai's poetry isn't " poetic enough " are helplessly bound to their own rigid definitions of poetry. this woman " goes there " over and over again...

Narrative, unique, and some of the best poetics being written today. Ai proves once again she's a force to let sweep over you. An work of infinite virtue & genius.

The language is plain and they are easy to understand. If you took away the line breaks they could be read as straight prose. I could not detect any rhythmic or prosodic pattern. They are straightforward imaginary confessions - sort of Joyce Carol Oates mini-horror stories. The bad guys are rather standard liberal targets. It is readable and I found myself turning the pages and keeping on reading which is more than I can say for more edifying and esoteric poetry.