Ai (1) (1947–2010)
Author of Vice: New and Selected Poems
For other authors named Ai, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Ai was born Florence Anthony in Texas in 1947. She was of mixed racial heritage including Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, African-American, Irish, Southern Cheyenne and Comanche. She legally changed her name to Ai, which means love in Japanese. She received an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine in show more 1971. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978 and 1985, and the National Book Award for her poetry collection Vice in 1999. Her other works include Cruelty, Killing Floor, and No Surrender. From 1999 until her death, she was a professor at Oklahoma State University. She died of natural causes on March 20, 2010 at the age of 62. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Ai
Associated Works
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,339 copies, 9 reviews
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (2020) — Contributor — 199 copies, 5 reviews
This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work (2004) — Contributor — 165 copies, 3 reviews
Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (2018) — Contributor — 99 copies, 2 reviews
Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945 (1994) — Contributor — 94 copies
Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2013) — Contributor — 44 copies
Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry and Prose (Bamboo Ridge, No. 76) (1999) — Contributor — 17 copies
Onthebus No. 8 and 9 — Contributor — 6 copies
Manroot 8: Womanhood — Contributor — 5 copies
Antaeus No. 23, Autumn 1976 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Ogawa, Ai
Anthony, Florence - Birthdate
- 1947-10-21
- Date of death
- 2010-03-20
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Albany, Texas, USA
- Place of death
- Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
- Education
- University of Arizona (BA - Oriental Studies)
University of California, Irvine (MFA) - Occupations
- poet
antiques dealer
jewelry designer
professor - Organizations
- Oklahoma State University
- Awards and honors
- Guggenheim fellow, 1975
Radcliffe Institute fellow, 1975
Massachusetts Arts and Humanities fellowship, 1976
Lamont poetry selection, Academy of American Poets, 1978
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1978, 1985
Ingram Merrill Award, 1983 (show all 9)
St Botolph Foundation grant, 1986
American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1987, for Sin
National Book Award, Poetry, 1999 for Vice - Short biography
- Florence Anthony was born in 1947 in Albany, Tex., and reared mostly in Arizona by her mother and stepfather. For years her biological father’s identity was kept from her. She later learned, as she wrote in an autobiographical essay in the reference work Contemporary Poets, that “I am the child of a scandalous affair my mother had with a Japanese man she met at a streetcar stop.”
In 1969 Ms. Anthony received a bachelor’s degree in Oriental studies, with a concentration in Japanese, from the University of Arizona. She earned a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, in 1971. Her first collection of poems, “Cruelty,” was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1973.
Members
Reviews
A collection of poems about the worst that humanity has to offer. Serial killers, mobsters, wife beaters, pedophile priests, and corrupt politicians each get a chance to tell their story. The voice of each poem is strong and compelling, unflinching and universally dark. Still there are layers of meaning and much to meditate upon. These poems will haunt you and reveal truths if you are brave enough to accept them.
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 show more 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. show less
Dread: Poems by Ai
Ai (1947-2010) was an award-winning poet and professor at Oklahoma State University until her death from cancer last month (an obituary of her appeared in The New York Times on March 28th). She was originally named Florence Anthony, and was born out of wedlock to an African-American woman and a Japanese man. She legally changed her name to Ai, which means "love" in Japanese: "Ai is the only name by which I wish, and indeed, should be known. Since I am the child of a scandalous affair my show more mother had with a Japanese man she met at a streetcar stop, and I was forced to live a lie for so many years, while my mother concealed my natural father's identity from me, I feel that I should not have to be identified with a man, who was only my stepfather, for all eternity."
Her collection Vice: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award for poetry in 1999, and her 1986 book Sin: Poems won an American Book Award in 1986. A posthumous volume of her work, No Surrender, will be published in the US in September.
Dread is a collection of poems mainly about adults who relive traumatic events from their childhood, including abuse, the death of a sibling or parent, or, in one poem, Ai's own birth, which caused great shame to her mother and extended family. The poems are moderately lengthy, simple and searingly direct. The story that affected me the most was "Delusion", in which a disturbed young woman goes to the World Trade Center just after 9/11 to look for her sister, who actually died years before. The sister tells the woman that she will find her at Ground Zero, after she suffers a mental breakdown. Here is a short excerpt:
In the hospital, I chanced to see
the horrible events of September 11th on TV.
The day of my release, I told a nurse,
"I'm well, you know,"
and she didn't even glance my way,
as she replied, "That's what they all say."
On the way to my apartment,
my sister came out of hiding.
"You'll find me at ground zero," she whispered
and I answered, "I know."
"I had a conversation with the dead.
It was all in my head," I said aloud.
No one paid any notice.
I was just another person "with issues"
and on that day in particular
attention was focused elsewhere.
So when I showed up at the lodging
for relatives of survivors,
I had an identity at last
that combined the past with the present.
The poems in Dread are deeply moving and often disturbing, and give voices to stories that are frequently hidden. I will certainly look for more of Ai's books in the near future. show less
Her collection Vice: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award for poetry in 1999, and her 1986 book Sin: Poems won an American Book Award in 1986. A posthumous volume of her work, No Surrender, will be published in the US in September.
Dread is a collection of poems mainly about adults who relive traumatic events from their childhood, including abuse, the death of a sibling or parent, or, in one poem, Ai's own birth, which caused great shame to her mother and extended family. The poems are moderately lengthy, simple and searingly direct. The story that affected me the most was "Delusion", in which a disturbed young woman goes to the World Trade Center just after 9/11 to look for her sister, who actually died years before. The sister tells the woman that she will find her at Ground Zero, after she suffers a mental breakdown. Here is a short excerpt:
In the hospital, I chanced to see
the horrible events of September 11th on TV.
The day of my release, I told a nurse,
"I'm well, you know,"
and she didn't even glance my way,
as she replied, "That's what they all say."
On the way to my apartment,
my sister came out of hiding.
"You'll find me at ground zero," she whispered
and I answered, "I know."
"I had a conversation with the dead.
It was all in my head," I said aloud.
No one paid any notice.
I was just another person "with issues"
and on that day in particular
attention was focused elsewhere.
So when I showed up at the lodging
for relatives of survivors,
I had an identity at last
that combined the past with the present.
The poems in Dread are deeply moving and often disturbing, and give voices to stories that are frequently hidden. I will certainly look for more of Ai's books in the near future. show less
This is the last collection of poems by this award winning poet of mixed descent (African-American, Japanese-American, Native American), who died this spring, which consists of narrative poems about people from various backgrounds struggling to survive against difficult odds: a second generation Irish Catholic woman in post-World War II faces ostracization from her family and community after getting pregnant out of wedlock; a widow must cope with her husband's sudden death from the bombing show more of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; a scholar from New Delhi immigrates to the U.S. illegally and scraps to make ends meet as a taxi driver. Each poem in itself is powerful, but as a whole the collection contained too much pain and despair for me to enjoy this work. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 9
- Also by
- 21
- Members
- 524
- Popularity
- #47,450
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 11
- ISBNs
- 21
- Favorited
- 2