A great bulk of Ai's narrative poems are expertly composed, each inhabiting the mind of one or another voice whose grievances and reflections hold quietly boiling commentaries on race, masculinity, womanhood, adolescence, sex, and death. Her first three collections demonstrate this in an exemplary fashion. The more specific character portraits of figures like James Dean and Jack Ruby that abound in the collections Fate and Greed make similar commentaries, but not in a way that is as visceral or nuanced as in earlier poems, though they are admirable and sometimes successful experiments. Later collections are more personal and reflective, and Vice contains some especially great moments. In hindsight, I'd probably choose that volume over this one, as it contains the best of her early work plus poems exclusive to that volume and omits the last two collections in this omnibus, which, aside from "The Cancer Chronicles" didn't hold my wonder as I had hoped they might. ( )

Read the intro essay and a few of the poems in the first collection . . . but am putting it aside for other, more pressingly compelling things. I'll get back to Ai in drips and drabs, probably as individual collections.