- Ai (poet)
Infobox Writer
imagesize = 150px
name = Ai
birthname = Florence Anthony
birthdate = Birth date and age|1947|1|2
birthplace =Albany, Texas ,United States
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Poet
nationality = American
genre =African American literature
movement =Imagism
influences =
influenced =
notableworks = Vice (1999)Florence Anthony (born January 2, 1947) is an American
poet who legally changed her name to Ai. [ [http://english.okstate.edu/faculty/fac_pages/ai.htm Ai Ogawa ] ]Life
Ai, who has described herself as ½ Japanese,
Choctaw -Chickasaw , Black, Irish, SouthernCheyenne , andComanche , was born inAlbany, Texas in 1947, and she grew up inTucson, Arizona . Raised also in Las Vegas and San Francisco, she majored in Japanese at the University of Arizona and immersed herself in Buddhism.Career
Currently based in Stillwater, Oklahoma at
Oklahoma State University , she has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and various universities; she has also been a frequent reader-performer of her work. Ai holds an M.F.A. from the University of California at Irvine. She is the author of Dread (W. W. Norton & Co., 2003); Vice (1999), which won theNational Book Award for Poetry ; Greed (1993); Fate (1991); Sin (1986), which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; Killing Floor (1979), which was the 1978 Lamont Poetry Award of theAcademy of American Poets ; and Cruelty (1973). She has also received awards from theGuggenheim Foundation , theNational Endowment for the Arts , and the Bunting Fellowship Program atRadcliffe College . She teaches atOklahoma State University and lives inStillwater, Oklahoma .Name change
She legally changed her name to "Ai," which means "love" in Japanese. She said "Ai is the only name by which I wish, and indeed, should be known. Since I am the child of a scandalous affair my 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."
Selected works
Poetry Collections
* Cruelty, 1973
*Killing Floor , 1979
* Sin, 1986
* Fate, 1991
* Greed, 1993
* Vice: New and Selected Poems, 1999
* Dread: Poems, 2004See also
*
List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas References
External links
* [http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C04020B Academy of American Poets]
* [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ai/ai.htm UIUC - Modern American Poetry]
* [http://www.nortonpoets.com/ai.htm Norton Poets Online]
* [http://english.okstate.edu/faculty/fac_pages/ai.htm Oklahoma State University Faculty pages]
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