{"id":25961,"date":"2012-10-13T15:10:44","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T15:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25961"},"modified":"2012-10-13T15:17:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T15:17:53","slug":"ai-a-steadfast-poetic-channel-of-hard-lives-dies-at-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25961","title":{"rendered":"Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2010-03-27<\/p>\n

Margalit Fox<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The prominent American poet Ai<\/a>, whose work \u2014 known for its raw power, jagged edges and unflinching examination of violence and despair \u2014 stood as a damning indictment of American society, died on March 20 in Stillwater, Okla<\/a>. She was 62 and lived in Stillwater.<\/p>\n

The cause was pneumonia, a complication of previously undiagnosed cancer, said Carol Moder<\/a>, head of the English department at Oklahoma State University, where Ai had taught since 1999.<\/p>\n

Born Florence Anthony, the poet legally changed her name to Ai, which means love in Japanese, as a young woman. She received a National Book Award in 1999 for \u201cVice: New and Selected Poems<\/a>,\u201d published that year by W. W. Norton & Company.<\/p>\n

Her other books include \u201cSin\u201d (1986), \u201cFate\u201d (1991), \u201cGreed<\/a>\u201d (1993) and \u201cDread<\/a>\u201d (2003). A posthumous volume, \u201cNo Surrender,\u201d is to be published by Norton in September…<\/p>\n

…Though Ai\u2019s work was determinedly not autobiographical, its concern with disenfranchised people was informed, she often said, by her own fractional heritage. Many poems could be read as biting dissertations \u201cOn Being 1\/2 Japanese, 1\/8 Choctaw, 1\/4 Black, and 1\/16 Irish,\u201d as the title of a 1978 essay she wrote in Ms.<\/em> magazine put it. (The proportions are telling, too, for not quite adding up to a complete person.)…<\/p>\n

…Florence Anthony was born in 1947 in Albany, Tex.<\/a>, and reared mostly in Arizona<\/a> by her mother and stepfather. For years her biological father\u2019s identity was kept from her. She later learned, as she wrote in an autobiographical essay in the reference work Contemporary Poets<\/em>, that \u201cI am the child of a scandalous affair my mother had with a Japanese man she met at a streetcar stop.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62 The New York Times 2010-03-27 Margalit Fox The prominent American poet Ai, whose work \u2014 known for its raw power, jagged edges and unflinching examination of violence and despair \u2014 stood as a damning indictment of American society, died on March 20 in Stillwater, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,1245,8,3015,20,25],"tags":[12462,12463,12464,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-25961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","category-women","tag-ai","tag-florence-anthony","tag-margalit-fox","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}