Paper Stuff

The poet I'm focusing on is Ai. She's a very "cut the bullshit" type writer who uses the dramatic monologue. Rather than focus on a certain event or action at the beginning of her writing, she builds a character. Writing in the first person about some pretty horrible stuff is a skill I'm glad I don't have. She says that she has to actually put herself into the shoes of her characters and imagine how they would act and react to the actions going on in the world around them. While she only used fictional characters at the beginning of her career, she began to take on high profile people, such as John F. Kennedy, James Dean, Jimmy Hofa, and others. In order to dive into the minds of these individuals, she said that she usually does extensive research by reading biographies about them.
For my paper, I'd like to write an extended dramatic monologue. I'd like to use a character modeled after myself as the speaker. And, I'm going to revisit some of the darkest characters that Ai has written about, as well as visit with her recreations of the more famous ones and some people that she hasn't yet written about. I'm talking about some of the scourge of the earth. Should be a lot of fun writing this, and I plan on including footnotes that will detail where the characters of Ai's creation can be found, as well as some stylistic notes.