Fate by Ai

First published: 1991

Type of work: Poetry

Form and Content

Fate: New Poems is a collection of long poems that give voice to mythic American figures. Some of Ai’s characters are people from recent history, such as film director Alfred Hitchcock, actor James Dean, singer Elvis Presley, Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, and Mary Jo Kopechne, the woman who drowned when Senator Edward Kennedy’s car plunged into a river in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Others are nameless but memorable individuals who live at a subsistence level and who survive out of sheer will. The poems are monologues or soliloquies that prod sharply at the reader’s gut as they give the stark details of violated lives. As the bemused, confused, and abused characters articulate their experiences, a picture emerges of the underside of America, a terrifying jungle where one class preys relentlessly on another and where women are almost invariably on the bottom.

The author explains her intent in a brief author’s note that prefaces the book: “Fate is about eroticism, politics, religion, and show business as tragicomedy, performed by women and men banished to the bare stage of their obsessions.” Characters take center stage just long enough to introduce themselves and sum up their lives, reinterpreting history or the American social scene while doing so. The individual poems are free-verse, sometimes apparently rambling discussions of how the character met his or her fate or continues daily to meet it. The women in the narratives tend to be victims who are violated not only by men but also by poverty, lack of education, and lack of opportunity. Some, such as Kopechne, are casually destroyed by a class that does not value them and barely recognizes their existence. Others, such as the heroine of “The Cockfighter’s Daughter,” win out by developing toughness and aggressiveness in response to abuse.

The lesson of the poem is clear: America is a place of exploitation and violence, and the only way for its economically and educationally deprived women to survive is for them either to become as mean as the world in which they live or to develop a toughness that, coupled with street savvy, will allow them to outwit their exploiters and gain a measure of selfhood. “Eve’s story,” for example, begins with a telling incident of violence: When the speaker’s cat gave birth to a misshapen kitten, her father twisted “the kitten’s head clean off.” Having buried the kitten, whose “body was still soft and spongy,” the child has learned the fate of the helpless and resolves always to be able to take care of herself. Her later adventures involve sexual exploitation and revenge, but lead finally to a hard-won contentment in which she can reminisce with an old sexual rival about their sisterhood as victims.

Similarly, the young woman who identifies herself as “The Cockfighter’s Daughter” overcomes an abusive childhood to take to the roads herself, after her father’s death, with the fighting cock that has become her image and emblem. Yet even such bittersweet happy endings are rare. These poems rip away layers of civilization and destroy contemporary myths of progress to show a sexual and a class warfare that is brutal and shocking. The blunt language and horrifying images initiate the reader into a very real world.

Context

Ai has won numerous awards with her outspoken and inimitable poetry. These include the Lamont Prize, offered by the Academy of American Poets for the best second book of poetry, which was awarded to Killing Floor (1979), and the American Book Award, awarded to Sin (1986). Her first book, Cruelty (1973), revealed her empathy with the rural poor and her rage at their condition. Its unforgettable snapshots of people struggling with unbearable oppression and poverty quickly found their way into anthologies and classrooms. Ai became a popular figure on the U.S. poetry circuit, where her dramatic readings drew crowds many times larger than the usual attendance for such events: She is one of a handful of contemporary American poets who brings inn people from the university and from the community in almost equal force.

The poetry of Ai appeals to a varied audience. She is of mixed ancestry, with a Japanese father and a mother who is “a Black, Choctaw Indian, Irish and German woman from Texas.” Thus many can identify with her, especially as she limits her work to no single group. Her name means “love” in Japanese; one might add that in French “ai!” is a cry of pain. Pain and love in their various combinations and interdependencies are her subjects, and they are a powerful drug. It is easy to become addicted to these poems, with their unusual, arresting images that shock the reader into full awareness.

Ai’s work is in keeping with the 1980’s and 1990’s historical revisionism, as well as with these decades’ concern with oppression in all of its forms. Her women characters are intensely real individuals whose frustrations and longings cross class barriers. In providing a voice for the silent or silenced, Ai allows the dreams and desires of disadvantaged women to be articulated. The readers or listeners recognize that these needs—for love, respect, truth, and a sense of self—are the same as their own. The poems are deliberately obtrusive. An Ai poem on rape, for example, makes readers feel violated. They then have an understanding of what a rape victim experiences and can no longer dismiss the issue of rape as something irrelevant to their lives.

The poems of Ai have no program, and they offer no solution besides compassion. Yet they dramatize the problems of the disadvantaged (in particular of women) so vividly that they cause readers to seek ways to ameliorate social conditions as well as to consider the roots of oppression and violence in the human character. The poems of Fate first attract readers by their rough textures, but they keep them by their in-depth understanding of the problems exposed. Ai is an able spokesperson for the oppressed of twentieth century America.

Bibliography

Booklist. LXXXVII, January 1, 1991, p. 902.

Cassells, Cyrus. “The Dream of Manhood.” Callaloo 9 (Winter, 1986): 243. An insightful analysis of the development of Ai’s style and theme, focusing on her male characters and her views of “our distorted concepts of manhood.”

Detroit News and Free Press. March 24, 1991, p. R7.

Flamm, Matthew. “Ai Came, Ai Saw, Ai Conquered.” The Village Voice 31 (July 22, 1986): 43. This essay presents Ai’s own analysis of her work, followed by commentary by Flamm. An introductory essay providing an overview of Ai’s life and work, this piece represents the color and flavor of her work well.

Ingram, Claudia. Review of Fate. Belles Lettres:A Review of Books by Women 6 (Spring, 1991): 58. Ingram relates the characters of Fate to the earlier work of Ai. This review is useful as a brief introduction to Fate and to Ai’s general outlook.

Library Journal. CXV, December, 1990, p. 129.

Poetry. CLIX, November, 1991, p. 108.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVII, December 21, 1990, p. 48.

The Virginia Quarterly Review. LXVII, Summer, 1991, p. 101.

Wilson, Rob. “The Will to Transcendence in Contemporary American Poet, Ai.” Canadian Review of American Studies 17, no. 4 (Winter, 1986): 437-448. This provocative essay looks at the violence in Ai’s poetry as leaning toward a contemporary kind of mysticism. Wilson provides some general background on Ai’s work and traces the strain of transcendence through several of her books.