Ai (poet)

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Ai, 2010

Ai (born October 21, 1947 in Albany, Texas , † March 20, 2010 in Stillwater, Oklahoma ) was an American poet who specialized in the dramatic monologue , which she gave both anonymous people and well-known personalities in the mouth put. Her first collection of monologues was published in 1973; seven more followed until 2010. In addition to other awards, Ai received the National Book Award in 1999 . At the time of her death, she was teaching creative writing at Oklahoma State University .

life and work

Ai was born Florence Anthony in Albany in 1947 and grew up in Tucson , among others . Her father was a Japanese surnamed Ogawa with whom her married mother had a brief affair. Anthony was the last name of her mother's husband; during her childhood, however, Ai lived under the name Florence Haynes, the name of her second stepfather. In graduate school , she began calling herself Florence Anthony again. When she found out about her biological father in 1973, she took his surname and also the author's pseudonym "Ai", which has been used since 1969, as a middle name.

In 1969, Ai graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA . She then did her Masters of Fine Arts at the University of California at Irvine in 1971 . A first volume with short monologues appeared in 1973 under the title Cruelty . In 1975 Ai received a Guggenheim Fellowship and Bunting Fellowship from Radcliffe College, and in 1978 a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts . From 1977 to '78 Ai taught as a visiting poet at Wayne State University . In 1979 her second volume of poetry, Killing Floor , was published, the manuscript of which had won the Lamont Poetry Selection Award of the Academy of American Poets the year before. Here Ai introduced well-known personalities as narrators into their oeuvre.

Ai's third book, Sin , was published in 1986. At that time, a reviewer for the New York Times saw her influence in such a way that he said she was partly responsible for the popularity of the dramatic monologue among young poets at the time. For Sin , Ai received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation the following year . During this time she was a visiting poet at George Mason University , followed by a position as writer-in-residence at Arizona State University from 1988 to 1989.

Her two next works were Fate (1991) and Greed (1993). Under the title Vice: New and Selected Poems , eighteen new and 58 previously published monologues were published in 1999. This work won the National Book Award in the Poetry category. Starting in 1999, Ai became a professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State, a position she held until her death. In 2002 and 2003, she also took on the Chair of Creative Writing at Southwest Texas State University .

With Dread the last book came out in 2003, which was published during her lifetime. In 2009 she received the United States Artists Ford Fellowship. In March 2010, Ai died of pneumonia caused by a previously undetected cancer. No Surrender was published posthumously in September .

Works

  • Cruelty (1973)
  • Killing Floor (1979)
  • Sin (1986)
  • Fate (1991)
  • Greed (1993)
  • Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999)
  • Dread (2003)
  • No Surrender (2010)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Nikolas Huot: Ai (1947-). In: Catherine Cucinella (Ed.): Contemporary American Women Poets: An A-to-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2002. ISBN 0-313-31783-6 , pp. 7 ff.
  2. ^ A b Margalit Fox: Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62nd obituary in the New York Times, March 27, 2010.
  3. ^ Okla Elliott: Interview with Ai. ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Pedestal Magazine, Issue Sixteen: Jun-Aug (03). Retrieved October 16, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Riggs (Ed.): Contemporary Poets. New York: St. James Press 1996. ISBN 1558621911 , p. 10
  5. ^ David Wojahn: Monologues in Three Tones. The New York Times, June 8, 1986.
  6. ^ OSU English Department: The Poet Ai - 1947-2010. ( Memento of May 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 29 kB) Obituary, accessed on October 16, 2011.
  7. ↑ United States Artists: Ai. ( Memento of October 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved October 16, 2011.
  8. ^ WW Norton & Company: No Surrender. Publisher website, accessed October 16, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Ai
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ogawa, Ai; Ogawa, Florence Ai; Anthony, Florence; Haynes, Florence; Ogawa, Pelorhankhe Ai
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American poet and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Albany (Texas)
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 2010
Place of death Stillwater, Oklahoma