Ai
Ai Ogawa (born Florence Anthony) was an American poet who who described herself as 1/2 Japanese, 1/8 Choctaw-Chickasaw, 1/4 Black, 1/16 Irish and as well as Southern Cheyenne and Comanche. She is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. While her poems often contain sex, violence, and other subjects for which she received criticism, she stated during a 1978 interview that she did not view her use of them as gratuitous. About the poems in her first collection, Cruelty, she said: "I wanted people to see how they treated each other and themselves." In 1999 she won the National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems.
“...the truth is always changing, always shaped by the latest collective urge to destroy.”
Ai
“I start pulling my guts outthose red silk cords,spiraling skyward,and I'm climbing thempast the moon and the sun,past darknessinto white.I mean to live.”
Ai
“...grief.If you eat too much of it, you want more, you can never get enough.”
Ai
“To me, the ideological high wire is for fools to balance on with their illusions. It is better to leap into the void.Isn't that what we all want anyway?—to eliminate all pretense till like the oppressed who in the endidentifies with the oppressor, we accept the worst in ourselves and are set free.”
Ai