Böcker av Arthur Sze

"In The Silk Dragon II, National Book Award-winning poet Arthur Sze presents a sophisticated vision of the vitality, diversity, and power of the Chinese poetic tradition. Traveling over one and a half millennia, Sze guides readers through a luminous history of verse, from the contemplative insights of fifth century poet Tao Qian, through Tang dynasty poets such as Wang Wei and Du Fu, and into subsequent centuries in which lived such innovative artists as Li Qingzhao and Bada Shanren, among many others. Extending the work from the original 2001 volume, The Silk Dragon II then traces classical Chinese poetry's eruption into the free verse of the modern and contemporary eras, introducing groundbreaking poems by the Chinese Modernist master Wen Yiduo, as well as those from major living poets such as Wang Jiaxin, Zhai Yongming, and Xi Chuan. Through this remarkable journey -- deepened by Sze's personal introduction -- we see that the "impossible task" of translation is yet rich with encounter, as both long-lost voices and those still speaking enter the same conversation, with the same vivacity."--

**Winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature Award**An affordable paperback edition of Arthur Sze's Collected Works—which includes many new poems—by one of the most astonishing poets writing today.The Glass Constellation is a triumph spanning five decades, including ten poetry collections and twenty-six new poems, from National Book Award winner Arthur Sze. Sze began his career writing compressed, lyrical poems influenced by classical Chinese poetry; he later made a leap into powerful polysemous sequences, honing a distinct stylistic signature that harnesses luminous particulars, and is sharply focused, emotionally resonant, and structurally complex. Fusing elements of Chinese, Japanese, Native American, and various Western experimental traditions―employing startling juxtapositions that are always on target, deeply informed by concern for our endangered planet and troubled species―Sze presents experience in all its multiplicities, in singular book after book. This collection is an invitation to immerse in a visionary body of work, mapping the evolution of one of our finest American poets.

Sze, in drawing connections between the pastoral and the catastrophic, speaks to a contemporary condition in which we are constantly fragmented and made whole again as we are presented with a saturation of narratives. In his scenes of the quotidian, musings on life and death, and traversals between the natural and the artificial, Sze opens us to multitudinous lines of sight.

In Arthur Sze's tenth collection, the poet uses crisp, graceful language of astronomy, biology, and music.