Passion in Ai’s Poetry Ai uses both sexes as speakers in her poems. In Twenty-year Marriage there is a female speaker who is speaking to her husband through her body movements. It is a man conveying thoughts to the mother of his dead child in Abortion. Both poems are very moving and believable. They present themselves as spoken by a particular character who has let the reader into their souls. The wife of twenty …showed first 75 words of 910 total…

…showed last 75 words of 910 total…but also of the other character. Through her words, Ai is able to bring her characters to life. “These voices are sharp and clear, and they resonate not because they shock, but because they and the language they speak are so familiar” (Quashie 16) Perhaps it is the familiarity of the characters situations that brings the poems to life. The speakers passion is able to be conveyed so realistically thanks to Ai’s phraseology. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**