Ai was born Florence Anthony in 1947. She legally changed her name to Ai, meaning “love” in Japanese. Her poetry is often concerned with her identity and feminist politics. She includes first-person accounts in her work, many of which have earned praise. Her first collection was Cruelty, published in 1973.
Ai’s poem ‘Cuba, 1962’ appears in her poetry collection Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. This piece is written in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
When the rooster jumps up on the windowsill
and spreads his red-gold wings,
I wake, thinking it is the sun
Ai’s poem ‘The Kid’ presents a haunting tale of a fourteen-year-old boy who kills his mother, sister, and grandfather, and then runs away. It appears in her award-winning poetry collection Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999).
My sister rubs the doll’s face in mud,
then climbs through the truck window.
She ignores me as I walk around it,
hitting the flat tires with an iron rod.
‘The Man with the Saxophone’ by Ai contains a description of a lonely, quiet New York street and the moments of happiness the narrator experiences while listening to music.
New York. Five A.M.
The sidewalks empty.
Only the steam Line pouring from the manhole covers seems alive,
as as I amble from shop window to shop window,
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