Arthur Sze’s latest book is The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). He is the recipient of a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation and also of the 2021 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. His expanded edition of translations of Chinese poetry, The Silk Dragon II, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2024.
Poetry
July/Aug 2020
Pyrocumulus
Peony shoots rise out of the earth; at 5 a.m., walking up the ridge, I mark how, in April, Orion’s left arm was an apex in the sky, and, by […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2020
Acequia del Llano
1 The word acequia is derived from the Arabic as-saquiya (water conduit) and refers to an irrigation ditch that transports water from a river to farms and fields, as well […]
Poetry
Summer 2007
Spectral Lines
1. Who passes through the gates of the four directions? Robin coughs as she tightens a girth, adjusts saddle, and, leading Paparazzo past three stalls, becomes woman-leading-horse-into-daylight. Though the Chu […]
Poetry
Winter 2003
Didyma
1. Disoriented, a woman wanders in the riverbed east then west then east, asks us how to get to County Road 101G. We stare at vertebrae and long bones that […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Before Sunrise
The myriad unfolds from a progression of strokes—one, ice, corpse, hair, jade, tiger. Unlocking a gate along a barbed-wire fence, I notice beer cans and branches in the acequia. There […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Lobed Bowl with Black Glaze and White Scalloped Rim
Turning from the obituary page, he hears a screw tighten, recalls a dead sparrow on a greenhouse floor. The mind can be dipped in a vat when you slice an […]
Poetry
Autumn 1993
Oolong
1 Tea leaves wilted in sunlight are shaken and bruised so that the edges redden and veins turn transparent. A man at a counter eats boiled silkworms and coughs; a […]
Introduction
Summer 2023
Arthur Sze Introduces Jennifer Elise Foerster
I’ve included a poem in the form of a letter to an ancient Chinese poet, Tao Qian (365–427 CE), and I have added a translation of a poem by contemporary […]
Poetry
Summer 2023
A Letter to Tao Qian
The Kenyon Review · A Letter To Tao Qian I wish to tell you but lose the words — more than a millennium later, on another continent, in another language, I […]
Nov/Dec 2021
Into the Hush
1 A magpie feather gleams in the grass; today you are not having open-heart surgery, nor are you strapped to a hospital bed, inhaling oxygen; you do not mix cement […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2018
The White Orchard
Under a supermoon, you gaze into the orchard— a glass blower shapes a glowing orange mass into a horse— you step into a space where you once lived— crushed mica […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2018
Eye Exam
E D F C Z P his eyesight is tethered to shore— no sign of zebras but spotted towhees repair their nest; before the ditch is cleared, plum trees are blossoming along a riparian bank— […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2018
Trawler
In first light, a raucous, repeating cry of a bird— you squint at the ocean, where the edge of far water, darker than sky, limns the curving horizon; a white […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2018
Whiteout
Honey mushrooms glow in the dark; in a sweat, a journalist wakes to a roadside bomb; when a woman outside a bakery offers to wash your car windshield, you give […]
The Longer Lyric
Nov/Dec 2016
The Glass Constellation
Apple branches whiten in moonlight; no god with an ibis head and human body writes on a papyrus scroll here; in daylight, snow has accumulated on flagstone and fence posts; […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2015
Python Skin
1 Smoke engulfs a boat in a harbor—we motor past and recall a flotilla of fishing boats lashed together with Hong Kong skyscrapers in the distance; when we dock, I […]
Nature's Nature: A Gathering of Poetry
May/June 2015
Sight Lines
I’m walking in sight of the Río Nambe— salt cedar rises through silt in an irrigation ditch— the snowpack in the Sangre de Cristos has already dwindled before spring— at […]
Poetry
Fall 2012
The Unfolding Center
1 Tea leaves in a black bowl: green snail spring waiting to unfurl. Nostrils flared, I inhale: expectancy's a seed— we planted two rows of sunflowers then drove to Colorado— […]
Poetry
Summer 2010
Returning to Northern New Mexico after a Trip to Asia
A tea master examines pellets with tweezers, points to the varying hues, then pushes the dish aside. At another shop, a woman rinses a cylindrical cup with black tea: we […]
Poetry
Summer 2010
After a New Moon
Each evening you gaze in the southwest sky as a crescent extends in argentine light. When the moon was new, your mind was desireless, but now both wax to the […]
Poetry
Summer 2023
Ice Anglers
In the reservoir near my house, when winter comes, you can see some ice anglers, each one squatting in an old army overcoat. From a distance, they look like crows […]
Translation: Three Eastern Authors: Five Poems
Summer 1998
Inscribed on a Painting
White clouds, like a sash, wind around the mountain’s waist. Stone steps rise into the void on this steep, narrow path. Alone, leaning on a chenopod staff, I gaze into […]
Translation: Three Eastern Authors: Five Poems
Summer 1998
Globefish
—from the third of four album leaves A fine rain drizzles and drizzles on Yellow Bamboo Village. A light boat bobs and bobs among waves and clouds. How can […]
Translation: Three Eastern Authors: Five Poems
Summer 1998
Inscription for a Painting
Summer solstice: on Chang-t’ai Street, I dab a corpse-like cloud image with a brush. Of the chronicles recited on the ancient terrace, where is the wind that will wash them […]
Translation: Three Eastern Authors: Five Poems
Summer 1998
Bright Light and Cloud Shadows
Spring mountains have no near or far. A thought of the past instantly becomes a forest. With no place where clouds are not flying, how did a worldly thought come […]
Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze’s latest book of poetry is Compass Rose (Copper Canyon, 2014), and Pig’s Heaven Inn, bilingual selected poems, was published in Beijing (Intellectual Property Publishing House, 2014). He received […]
Arthur Sze
A Conversation with Arthur Sze By KR poetry editor David Baker