25 January 2004<\/p>\n
Within formal poetry, each form has its own unique pitfalls:\u00a0 with sestinas and pantoums, it is the danger of repeated phrases becoming stale and therefore easy to overlook; with metered lines, it is that recurring rhythms may become too trite, sing-songey, distracting the reader and lending an air of frivolity (or sense of the archaic) to the poem.\u00a0 The dramatic monolog, or persona poem, has its own set of problems, some of which are brought to mind by a reading of Ai\u2019s new and selected poems in Vice<\/em>.\u00a0 These problems include the authenticity of voice and diction to the speaker and the familiarity of the reader with the historical figure being represented in the poem, if such specificity is appropriate.\u00a0 How much does the writer trust the reader to \u201cget\u201d the poem even if he is unfamiliar with the historical facts reported or alluded to in the work?\u00a0 How does a poet convey the actions and thoughts and history of the character to the reader without being too explicit, in the event that the persona is a historical figure she hopes to truly portray?\u00a0 Through a reading of the poems in Vice<\/em>, it is clear that even experienced and \u201csuccessful\u201d poets like Ai must still contend with these issues in the monolog form.\u00a0 For the most part she handles them with the gusto of an artist and the skill of a craftsman.<\/p>\n In a monolog whose speaker is fictional, one of the ways in which the reader gets a sense of the character is through that character\u2019s speech; word choice, word order, and level of formality all contribute to our understanding of the speaker\u2019s education, position, and attitude in a poem.\u00a0\u00a0 When the subject of a monolog is an actual historical figure, we may already be familiar with some of these qualities through study or popular reference.\u00a0 In this case, it becomes increasingly important for the poet to accurately simulate the speaker\u2019s \u201cvoice,\u201d so that the character is believable to us when we read the poem.\u00a0 A college English professor, for example, might be likely to use literary allusions and standard English language, while a high-school educated construction worker might be more inclined toward slang and popular-culture references.\u00a0 (These are stereotypes, of course; there are highly literate blue-collar workers as well as pop-culture obsessed PhDs.\u00a0 I believe the point is still valid \u2013 the former associations are more common in our culture).<\/p>\n Ai is extremely accomplished at the task of fitting the speech to the speaker even when the subject is a very well known historical figure.\u00a0 For example, in \u201cTwo Brothers\u201d (47), John F. Kennedy speaks to his brother Robert \u2013 after his own death \u2013 about his life and death, addressing Robert Kennedy as \u201cBobby\u201d and referring to himself by his nickname, \u201cJack.\u201d\u00a0 In the language of this poem, we can almost hear JFK\u2019s pronounced Massachusetts accent, with its distinctive \u201ca\u201ds, as in the description of dying in lines 6-7:\u00a0 \u201cDeath, Bobby, hit me \/ like the flat of a hand.\u201d\u00a0 It is simple and direct, as Northeasterners tend to be, and as we might imagine two brothers to be when speaking in absolute privacy.\u00a0 And in \u201cJames Dean\u201d (113), we get another taste of the facility with which Ai puts words in the mouths of celebrity figures:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 until I drove the road<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 like the back of a black panther,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 speckled with the gold<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of the cold and distant stars<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and the slam, bang, bam<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of metal jammed against metal.\u00a0 (lines 4-9)<\/p>\n How appropriate this is, the subtle positioning of the speaker, the late<\/em> James Dean, at a height from which the road seems like a panther\u2019s back.\u00a0 And then comes the reminder of his youth \u2013 the onomatopoeic words he uses to describe the fatal car crash:\u00a0 slam, bang, bam<\/em>.\u00a0 Like a boy.\u00a0 We understand that with death has come a new perspective, but we also see that not everything has changed with the transition.\u00a0 And we get this all from his language, which is never too polished, but filled with attitude, almost brash, like the rebel we commonly associate with Dean\u2019s teenaged persona.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026if anybody\u2019d let me, \/ I\u2019d have proved\u201d he brags in lines 23-4, and \u201cI didn\u2019t give a Quaker\u2019s shit, man, \/ I gave performances. \/ I even peed on the set of Giant<\/em> \u2013 \u201c in lines 61-3.\u00a0 Vice<\/em> is filled with examples equally as fitting, all of which lend both depth and believability to the characters of their poems.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another area of concern that is particularly important with monologs containing famous subjects is that of trust:\u00a0 how much faith does the writer place in her audience to \u201cget\u201d the poem\u2019s nuance?\u00a0 The answer, as it usually applies to Ai, seems to be, \u201cVery much.\u201d\u00a0 Although in general it seems that she trusts us more when the details of the subject\u2019s life or situation are more well known, and less when the figure is somewhat obscure, there are a few notable exceptions, one of which stand out as noteworthy.\u00a0 In \u201cHoover, Edgar J.,\u201d from the 1993 book Greed<\/em>, the first twenty or so lines are highly rhythmic, with lots of internal- as well as end-rhymes, as in lines 18-24:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 just to aggravate me,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but my strength is truth.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have the proof<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of every kind of infidelity<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and that makes me the one free man<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in a country of prisoners<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of lust, greed, hatred, need[.]<\/p>\n After about the midway point of the first section, however, the language becomes less rhythmic, the rhymes less frequent.\u00a0 And although the rhyming picks back up later in the poem, in section 2, the musicality remains stifled, the meter irregular enough to subdue the strong rhymes \u201crooms\/perfume\u201d and \u201cproclaimed\/name.\u201d\u00a0 It is as if Hoover starts out as a young black man, then morphs into a suburban white man (lines 25-34), then fades back and forth for the middle section of the poem until finally settling on the latter arrangement in the final twenty or so lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n The uncertainty of voice here is disconcerting, at least initially, but the next poem in the collection helps clear up some of the mystery; \u201cHoover Trismegistus\u201d finds Hoover considering the possibility that he might be part black:\u00a0 \u201cWas I a throwback to some buck \/ who sat hunched over in the hull \/ of a ship, \/ while the whip lashed his back?\u201d (lines 8-11).\u00a0 But in this poem, Hoover speaks in a voice the reader is more likely to recognize, a tough, \u201cG-Man\u201d kind of verbiage that refers to the man\u2019s historically-correct attitude, as in this passage:\u00a0 \u201cWhen they called Joe McCarthy\u2019s bluff, \/ he grabbed his nuts and ran\u201d (26-7).\u00a0 If \u201cHoover, Edgar J.\u201d were positioned after \u201cHoover Trismegistus,\u201d we might feel that we had learned enough from the first poem to understand the resistance to, but fascination with, ethnic language in the second.\u00a0 However, in Vice<\/em> the reader is asked to accept the rap-music style of \u201cHoover, Edgar J.\u201d as belonging to Hoover before<\/em> the explanatory \u201cTrismegistus.\u201d\u00a0 In effect, Ai is placing too much<\/em> trust in our hands; we are expected to believe the alternative version of Hoover that is presented through speech, without any hints in the content as to why.\u00a0 One of the problems inherent in the dramatic monolog is that the reader must know enough — or be able to glean enough — information about the central character to envision the style of speech as indicative of the speaker\u2019s real self, whether or not the speech is that normally associated with the figure.\u00a0<\/p>\n If, as Bin Ramke says, \u201cThe first duty of the poem is to teach us how to read it\u201d (Meek 40), this poem has failed in this duty.\u00a0 And upon consideration, I do believe Ramke\u2019s statement is true, at least, or should I say, in particular, regarding monolog poems, where the character must be recognizable at least as to type, from pretty near the beginning in most cases.\u00a0 It is difficult to find much fault, however, when the problem lies in the author\u2019s placing too much trust in us as readers.\u00a0 As it turns out, in an interview with Tomas Q. Morin in a recent issue of The Writer\u2019s Chronicle<\/em>, Ai explains this new ethnic spin on the former FBI director:\u00a0 \u201cIt came out of a biography I was reading; I always read the biographies of historical figures I want to write a poem about.\u00a0 In the biography there was talk that Hoover might have had black blood.\u00a0 So I thought, whoa, this is a whole new direction\u201d (Morin 8).\u00a0 Without this explanation, even the potential groundwork of \u201cHoover Trismegistus\u201d seems like a pretty long stretch to a reader who has never read this rather arcane fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet a third aspect of the monolog that bears study is the difficulty in conveyance of circumstance peculiar to the speaker.\u00a0 How does the author suggest prior action or situations in with specificity, without making direct statement of blindingly obvious fact?\u00a0 As it turns out, this problem is almost identical to the same issue in other types of poetry.\u00a0 Whether the speaker is actually placed in the poem, in the first-person reference, or is non-apparent or omniscient, the task remains the same:\u00a0 express the situation with enough detail to allow the reader to understand, while still letting him feel as though he is participating in the work of the poem.\u00a0 As Ai\u2019s poem \u201cConversation\u201d clearly demonstrates, sometimes the reader need not understand exactly the references included in the lines in order to find familiarity in the words.\u00a0 This poem, sub-headed \u201cFor Robert Lowell,\u201d almost certainly contains several references to Lowell\u2019s own poetry; I recognized one.\u00a0 Still, I got a strong sense of the direction of the poem and detected a style that I found comparable to Lowell\u2019s 1977 \u201cEpilogue,\u201d with its references to light and sound.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet there are also poems in which the reader does easily understand what has gone on, despite the lack of direct reference to an incident.\u00a0 In \u201cCharisma\u201d (199), for example, the speaker is never named, yet the implication is clear; David Koresh speaks here, post-1993.\u00a0 Another instance of this indirect directness is \u201cThe Mother\u2019s Tale\u201d (67), in which the mother of a young bridegroom gives instruction to her son, relating how he must handle his new wife:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You must beat Rosita often.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She must know the weight of a man\u2019s hand,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the bruises that are like the wounds of Christ.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her blood that is black at the heart<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 must flow until it is as red and pure as His. (lines 26-30)<\/p>\n Although we are told very little explicitly about the history of this woman, we know much about her.\u00a0 She has been beaten, certainly, for she defends the beatings like a victim of Stockholm syndrome; to deal with her own plight, she must rationalize the treatment she has received.\u00a0 Also, she knows the risk associated with unchecked passions in a woman, for she relates an incident from her own past in which she cut her husband\u2019s face with a knife in a fit of jealousy.\u00a0 And, she is deeply religious, indicating her faith in Jesus in the above lines probably both as part of her cultural heritage and upbringing, and as a way to deal with the oppression and abuse she has suffered.\u00a0 Again, we need not know the exact details of her life to understand her situation and probable relationship circumstance.<\/p>\n In reading the poems in Vice<\/em>, I was struck by how well Ai seems to understand the thoughts of people whose thoughts must be so alien to her, and how boldly she uses the voice of her characters to portray, right or wrong, their decisiveness in action.\u00a0 And possibly because she herself is so adept at pretending herself into someone else\u2019s position, she also trusts her readers to step into the arena of the poem.\u00a0 While occasionally this trust extends a bit too far, this condition seems preferable to the alternative of blindingly obvious statement.\u00a0 These poems are filled with subtlety and strength, allowing the reader to both experience the intended impact and participate in the works through the exercise of interpretation.\u00a0 This book is not only engaging and enjoyable; it is also a valuable study tool for would-be monologists.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Works Cited<\/p>\n Ai.\u00a0 Vice:\u00a0 New and Selected Poems<\/em>.\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Norton, 1999.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n Meek, Sandra.\u00a0 \u201cMaking and Meaning:\u00a0 An Interview with Bin Ramke.\u201d\u00a0 The Writer\u2019s <\/em>Chronicle<\/em>.\u00a0 36.4 (Feb. 2004).\u00a0 32+.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n Morin, Tomas.\u00a0 \u201cAn Interview with Ai.\u201d\u00a0 The Writer\u2019s Chronicle<\/em>.\u00a0 36.3\u00a0 (Dec. 2003).\u00a0 4+.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 25 January 2004 Within formal poetry, each form has its own unique pitfalls:\u00a0 with sestinas and pantoums, it is the danger of repeated phrases becoming stale and therefore easy to overlook; with metered lines, it is that recurring rhythms may … Continue reading