Ai, the poet, died this weekend...

[zalena]

I just got news that Ai, the poet in residence while I was at CU, passed away this weekend. I didn't know her personally, but she wrote amazing 'monologue' driven poetry and kind of cracked open my ideas about how poetry should be written and read. (The BP now teaches Blake as 'monologues,' no sense of whether it might be due to Ai's influence.) Her poetry is frequently disturbing, violent, but strangely humorous, especially as she expanded into 'monologues' by public figures later in her career. Her collection Vice won the National Book Award in 1999, just after she left CU.

Here is an excellent overview of her work @ Poetry Foundation, which includes links to some of her poems:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80637