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Adrian Matejka reflects on cruelty as manifested in American institutions, history, private lives, and the public realm of the past year. He opens with Ai\\u2019s invocation of the human hunger for violence (\\u201cCruelty\\u201d), Lucille Clifton\\u2019s deft blending of imagery and wisdom (\\u201ccruelty. don\\u2019t talk to me about cruelty\\u201d), and Al Young\\u2019s meditation on American cruelty as it begins with slavery (\\u201cThe Slave Ship Desire\\u201d). To close, Matejka reads his poem \\u201cSomebody Else Sold the World,\\u201d which considers the complexities of cruelty in the context of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Listen to the full recordings of Ai, Clifton, and Young reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Ai (1972)
Lucille Clifton (1983)
Al Young (1997)\\xa0

You can also watch a 2016 reading by Adrian Matejka on Voca.