Saddened to learn about the death of the poet Ai from pneumonia and undiagnosed cancer, according to the New York Times.

I first learned about Ai's poems in 1981 when I was 17 and started working at The Academy of American Poets in NYC. Ai's book Killing Floor was the Academy's 1978 Lamont Poetry Selection, and the cream-colored book with its jacket image of a child solider on it affected me deeply. Before I read Ai, I didn't understood how raw and primal poetry could be and go on being.

But Ai's Killing Floor and Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us, another Lamont Selection, helped me begin to see all the parts of life poetry could touch and render and defy.  Years later, when I heard a recording of Pablo Neruda read "Explico Algunos Cosas," I finally understood how vital it was for poetry to be part of public and political life.

Ai understood that. She claimed all of history in her poems, and the public was the personal for her. Here's part of her poem, "I Can't Get Started," which she dedicated to Ira Hayes:

I stumble out of the ditch
and make it to the shack.
I shoot a few holes in the roof,
then stare at the paper clippings of Iwo Jima.
I remember raising that rag
of red, white and blue,
afraid that if I let go, I'd live.
The bullets never touched me.
Nothing touches me.

Around noon, I make a cup of coffee
and pour a teaspoon of pepper in it
to put the fire out....
I'm burning from the bottom up,
a bottle of flesh....
I'm the one dirty habit
I just can't break.