Ai Archive
Cruelty’s Resonant Line
Ai’s complex depictions, in her 1970 collection of poetry, of contradictory emotions, desperation, character triangles, and speakers driven to and past the brink of perpetrating harm work because she employs minimalism in her poetic devices, including heavy use of the end-stopped line.
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: the Love Poem and the Elegy
All of my attempted love poems sound like elegies, and so I’ve given up trying to write them for my beloved, lest I give the wrong impression. Occasionally, however, one will come to me like a windfall, a speck of gold in the pan.