We study the tetraquark states with I^G J^{PC}=1^- 1^{-+} in the QCD sum
rule. After exhausting all possible flavor structures, we analyses both the SVZ
and finite energy sum rules. Both approaches lead to a mass around 1.6 GeV for
the state with the quark contents q q q_bar q_bar, and around 2.0 GeV for the
state with the quark contents q s q_bar s_bar. The flavor structure 3_bar *
6_bar + 6 * 3 is preferred. Our analysis strongly indicates that both pi1(1600)
and pi1(2015) are also compatible with the exotic tetraquark interpretation,
which are sometimes labeled as candidates of the 1^{-+} hybrid mesons. Moreover
one of their dominant decay modes is a pair of axial-vector and pseudoscalar
mesons such as b1(1235) pi, which is sometimes considered as the characteristic
decay mode of the hybrid mesons.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, revised version to appear in Phys. Rev.