Essays, Art and Plays by Dan

Arthur Sze, author of 12 books of poetry, has been named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress. It is one of the highest honors in poetry. Sze, a son of Chinese immigrants, was born in New York City and now lives in New Mexico.

In addition to writing poetry, he is a translator and plans to focus on promoting translated poetry during his tenure. Sze has received numerous awards including three lifetime achievement awards for poetry. His 2019 collection Sight Lines won the National Book Award. In 2015, Compass Rose was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

In accepting the laureate position, Sze said he felt a “great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully.”

Below is one of his poems and additional poems are on the Poetry Foundation website.

Midsummer
Tiger swallowtails hover over Russian sage—
I smell eucalyptus where there is no
eucalyptus and locate summer in rain.
Like bats emerging out of a cave at dusk,
a thread of grief unfurls in the sky.
Neither you nor I can stop the planting
of mines in a field or the next detonation.
I unclog a drip line along a fence;
in May, lilacs arced over the road in a cascade
of purple blossoms. Now, stilled in a minute
of darkness, I listen to bamboo leaves
unfurl above into sunshine. Untangling
a necklace composed of interlocking
gold chains, then lifting it, I trace
joy, fear, bewilderment, bliss, a this
resplendent in my fingertips. I slip inside
a strawberry runner that extends root, leaf,
then stand in morning starlight and inhabit a song.