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Ai Ogawa (born Florence Anthony; October 21, 1947 – March 20, 2010)"Ai." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Biography In Context. Web. Retrieved 2011-03-26."Ai." Contemporary Women Poets. Gale, 1998. Gale Biography In Context. Web. Retrieved 2011-03-26."Ai." Contemporary Poets. Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. Retrieved 2011-03-26.Obituary ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', March 28, 2010; page A26.
was an American poet and educator who won the 1999
National Book Award for Poetry The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers".
for ''Vice: New and Selected Poems''. Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. About writing in the dramatic monologue form, she's said: "I want to take the narrative 'persona' poem as far as I can, and I've never been one to do things in halves. All the way or nothing. I won't abandon that desire."


Early life

Ai, who described herself as 1/2
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, 1/8
Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
-
Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as ...
, 1/4
Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
, 1/16
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
, Southern
Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enroll ...
, and
Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...
, was born in
Albany, Texas Albany is a city in Shackelford County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,034 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 Census. It is the county seat of Shackelford County. History Established in 1873, Albany was named by county clerk Willi ...
, in 1947, and grew up in
Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...
. She spent time also in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, living with her mother and second stepfather, Sutton Haynes. In 1959, a couple of years after her mother's divorce from Hayes, they moved back to Tucson, Arizona, where she completed high school and attended college at the University of Arizona, where she majored in English and Oriental Studies with a concentration in Japanese and a minor in Creative Writing, to which she would fully commit toward the end of her degree. Before starting college, one night during dinner with her mother and third stepfather, Ai learned her biological father was Japanese. Known as Florence Hayes throughout her childhood and undergrad years, it was not until graduate school, when Ai was going to switch her last name back to Anthony, that her mother finally told her more details about her past, learning that she had an affair with a Japanese man, Michael Ogawa, after meeting him at a streetcar stop. Learning of the affair had led Ai's first stepfather, whose last name was "Anthony," to beat her mother until family intervened and she was taken to Texas, where her stepfather eventually followed after Ai's birth. Because her mother was still legally married to Anthony at the time, his last name was put on Ai's birth certificate. The poverty Ai experienced during her childhood affected her and her writing. Ai credits her first writing experience to an assignment in her Catholic school English class to write a letter from the perspective of a martyr. Two years after that experience, she began actively writing at the age of 14. History had been one of her many interests since high school.


Career

From 1969 to 1971, Ai attended the University of California at Irvine's M.F.A program where she worked under the likes of Charles Wright and
Donald Justice Donald Rodney Justice (August 12, 1925 – August 6, 2004) was an American teacher of writing and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr wrote, "In most ways, Justice was no different from an ...
. She is the author of ''No Surrender'', (2010), which was published after her death, ''Dread'' (W. W. Norton & Co., 2003); ''Vice'' (1999), which won the National Book Award; ''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 Selection The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach ...
of the
Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreac ...
; and ''Cruelty'' (1973). She also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
, the Bunting Fellowship Program at
Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
and from various universities. She was a visiting instructor at Binghamton University, State University of New York for the 1973–74 academic year. After winning the National Book Award for ''Vice'' she became a tenured professor and the vice president of the Native American Faculty and Staff Association at
Oklahoma State University Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
and lived in
Stillwater, Oklahoma Stillwater ( iow, Ñápinⁿje, ''meaning: "Water quiet"'') is a city in, and the county seat of, Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. It is located in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. Route 177 and State Highway 51. As of th ...
until her death.


Literary views/interviews

Ai Ogawa considered herself as "simply a writer" rather than a spokesperson for any particular group. About her own poetry in an interview with Lawrence Kearney and Michael Cuddihy in 1978, she emphasized that there are no "confessional" or autobiographical elements in her work. However, in an interview with Okla Elliott in 2003 after the publication of ''Dread'', she stated that some of the poems and characters in that book are "fictionalized versions" of her family history and that her multi-racial background and interest in history has had a strong influence on her work in this particular collection. In a 1999 interview, Ai was asked about the topics she uses in her writings, such as child abuse, necrophilia, and murder. When asked by interviewer Elizabeth Farnsworth why she chooses to write on these topics, Ai replied that “it’s really the characters, because hewrite monologues” (Farnsworth). She also spoke about her choice of characters that “there’s a lot more to talk about with the scoundrels” (Farnsworth). In that same interview, Farnsworth commented on the fact that even though Ai's poetry is written in first person, she is “almost always someone else” (Farnsworth). Ai also told Farnsworth that her “first poetry teacher said that when you wrote in the first person, that your work was often stronger” (Farnsworth). Throughout her writing career, Ai eventually realized that her “poems that were written in the first person were the strongest” (Farnsworth). She also told Farnsworth that she considers herself an “actor” and that is how she is able to successfully write as other characters. Farnsworth asked Ai about her poem about Jimmy Hoffa- “Jimmy Hoffa’s Odyssey.” Ai told Farnsworth that she got the idea from watching a The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Carson had told a joke that inspired Ai to write the poem. After she decided to write the poem, she found a biography on Hoffa and studied it before writing the piece. Ai said that she often reads biographies before writing a poem on an historical figure. While her work often contains sex, violence, and other controversial subjects, she told Kearney and Cuddihy during that 1978 interview that she did not view her use of them as gratuitous. Concerning the poems in her first collection, ''Cruelty'', she said: "I wanted people to see how they treated each other and themselves." She noted that the difference between the poems in ''Cruelty'' and those in ''Killing Floor'' is that they deal with her character's whole life rather than a single episode. She described her purpose for writing as "trying to integrate erlife emotionally and spiritually." When Ai was asked why she thought her work was so “edgy and dark”, Ai stated that “violence is an integral part of American culture” (Farnsworth). She tries to deal with that in her writing, which is something she said she has been working on her whole life. She said that “she was not able to deal with violence in erwork” early in her writing career, and that was something she intentionally set out to do. About contemporary American poetry and her own risk-taking in her work she said: "Perhaps there's a fear of revealing too much emotion in American poetry, despite the go-ahead of a sort from confessional poetry. At any rate, I think that that is my goal—I mean I never want to say 'I have plenty of heart,' but I want to be able to say whatever I feel without fear or embarrassment."


Name change

In 1973, she legally changed her last name to Ogawa and her middle name to "Ai" (愛), which translates to "love" in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, a pen name she had been using since 1969.


Death

Ai was checked into the hospital on March 17, 2010, for
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...
. Three days later, Ai died on March 20, 2010, at age 62, in
Stillwater, Oklahoma Stillwater ( iow, Ñápinⁿje, ''meaning: "Water quiet"'') is a city in, and the county seat of, Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. It is located in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. Route 177 and State Highway 51. As of th ...
, from complications of stage 4
breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...
.


Selected works


Poetry collections

* ''Cruelty'', Perseus Books Group, 1973, * ''Killing Floor'', Houghton Mifflin, 1979, * ''Sin'', Houghton Mifflin, 1986, * ''Fate'', Houghton Mifflin, 1991, * * ''Vice: New and Selected Poems'', Norton, 1999, – winner of the
National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...
"National Book Awards – 1999"
National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...
. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
(With acceptance speech by Ai and essay by Dilruba Ahmed from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
* ''Dread: Poems'', W.W. Norton, 2003, * *


See also

*
List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas This is a list of notable writers who are Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This list includes authors who are Alaskan Native, American Indian, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, a ...


References


External links


Academy of American Poets

W. W. Norton & Company > Bio Page






This "cyber-
tombeau A tombeau (plural tombeaux) is a musical composition (earlier, in the early 16th century, a poem) commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date ...
" at ''Silliman's Blog'' by poet
Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wr ...
includes comments, tributes, and links {{DEFAULTSORT:Ai 1947 births 2010 deaths African-American poets African-American women writers American poets American people of Cheyenne descent American people of Comanche descent American people of Irish descent American writers of Japanese descent American writers of Native American descent Deaths from cancer in Oklahoma Deaths from breast cancer National Book Award winners Native American poets American women poets American poets of Asian descent People from Albany, Texas People from Stillwater, Oklahoma Oklahoma State University faculty University of California, Irvine alumni University of Arizona alumni Poets from Arizona Writers from Oklahoma Writers from Texas 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers American Book Award winners Native American women writers American women academics 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American writers 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women