Beyond the Verse Writing Urban Landscapes in Ai Ogawa's 'The Man with the Saxophone'
In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, Maiya and Joe discuss Ai’s ‘The Man with the Saxophone’, a city poem that captures connection in the quiet streets of New York before sunrise.
After Maiya’s reading, they talk about Ai’s background and her remarkable voice as a poet. Born Florence Anthony in 1947 in Texas, she later chose the name Ai, meaning “love” in Japanese. With ancestry that included Japanese, Native American, Black, and Irish roots, she wrote with honesty about identity and humanity. Her major works include Cruelty, Sin, and Vice, which won the National Book Award in 1999.
Joe and Maiya describe how the poem begins at 5 in the morning. The city is silent, the sidewalks empty, and the speaker walks down Fifth Avenue until meeting a homeless saxophonist. This brief encounter becomes a moment of shared stillness and warmth in a cold and lonely setting. Through music, two people who might never meet again find a kind of wordless understanding.
They also reflect on Ai’s portrayal of New York as fragile and human rather than grand or glamorous. Snow is described as brittle, the city compared to an old man with a white beard, and the towering Empire State Building becomes a quiet backdrop instead of a symbol of power. The hosts consider how Ai turns the city into a space of reflection, where loneliness and beauty coexist.
The saxophone itself becomes a powerful image. It represents art, memory, and survival. The man plays not for money but because the music itself gives life meaning. Jazz, deeply tied to African American history, becomes a language of resilience. For the speaker, listening to that sound brings freedom and breath, a way to feel alive again.
Maiya and Joe look closely at the closing image: “each note, a black flower opening into the unforgiving new day.” The flower becomes a sign of hope pushing through the cold, a moment of grace that refuses despair. When the speaker imagines rising like a bird and then falling back to the ground, Ai shows the balance between freedom and reality, dream and endurance.
The episode ends with reflection on how Ai reclaims the city as belonging to those often unseen. Her poem listens to what happens in the quiet, reminding us that art can give voice to those who seem forgotten.
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