The Glass Constellation

"The recognition was long overdue when Sze won the 2019 National Book Award for his previous book, Sight Lines. This 500-page, career spanning retrospective is a fitting follow up, allowing readers to take in the full breadth of what Sze has achieved over ten collections published since the early 1970s... This book is an overwhelming feast, a treasure, and more than enough proof that Sze is a major poet." NPR, "Glimmers of Hope: A 2021 Poetry Preview"

"A monumental collection from a poet whose lasting importance should now be recognized; essential for dedicated readers of contemporary American poetry."Library Journal, starred review

"In the case of poet Arthur Sze, 'master' is no misnomer... Sze as poet has been continually searching for new ways of making poetry alive, to make way for the breathing infrastructure of the poem in all its fragility and rigor. As a result of his dynamic poetic efforts, the map of human consciousness will have grown more detailed." Kyoto Journal Review

Arthur Sze writes with a quiet mastery which generates beautiful, sensuous, inventive, and emotionally rich poems. Sight Lines unfurls like ink in water, circulating through meditations on the natural world; the pleasure and associational depth of eating food; and the profound constitutions of self through memory, human relationships, and experience of the actual world. A keen awareness arises of structural, environmental, and social threats in the midst of this expansive beauty.National Book Award, judges' citation, 2019

This is a poetry of assemblage, where violence and beauty combine and hang on Sze's particular gift for the leaping non sequitur Inside these poems of billowing consciousness, we too are alive to a spectrum of wonders. The New York Times

A collection in which the poet uses capacious intelligence and lyrical power to offer a dazzling picture of our interconnected world.Pulitzer Prize, finalist announcement, 2015

Everything can happen in the teeming space of a stanza by Arthur Sze; almost everything does Sze is hyper-awake to a chance that a petal may tip the balance of life; to the fact that 'we cannot act if we are asleep.'Jackson Poetry Prize, judges' citation, 2013

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Auteur
Arthur Sze has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award. His other books include Compass Rose (2014), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His poems have been translated into a dozen languages, including Chinese, Dutch, German, Korean, and Spanish. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.

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Winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature Award

"This book is an overwhelming feast, a treasure, and more than enough proof that Sze is a major poet." —NPR

National Book Award winner Arthur Sze is a master poet, and The Glass Constellation is a triumph spanning five decades, including ten poetry collections and twenty-six new poems. 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—Arthur 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.

Échantillon de lecture
Water Calligraphy

1

A green turtle in broth is brought to the table
I stare at an irregular formation of rocks

above a pond and spot, on the water's
surface, a moon. As I step back and forth,

the moon slides from partial to full
to partial and then into emptiness; but no

moon's in the sky, just slanting sunlight,
leafing willows along Slender West Lake,

parked cars outside an apartment complex
where, against a background of chirping birds

and car horns, two women bicker. Now
it's midnight at noon; I hear an electric saw

and the occasional sound of lumber striking
pavement. At the bottom of a teacup,

leaves form the character individual
and, after a sip, the number eight.

Snipped into pieces, a green turtle is returned
to the table; while everyone eats,

strands of thrown silk tighten, tighten
in my gut. I blink, and a woodblock carver

peels off pear shavings, stroke by stroke,
and foregrounds characters against empty space.

2

Begging in a subway, a blind teen and his mother stagger through the swaying car

a woman lights a bundle of incense and bows at a cauldron

people raise their palms around the Nine-Dragon Juniper

who knows the mind of a watermelon vendor picking his teeth?

you glance up through layers of walnut leaves in a courtyard

biting into marinated lotus stems

in a drum tower, hours were measured
as water rising then spilling from one kettle into another

pomegranate trees flowering along a highway

climbing to the top of a pagoda, you look down at rebuilt city walls

a peacock cries

always the clatter of mah-jongg tiles behind a door

at a tower loom, a man and woman weave brocade silk

squashing a cigarette above a urinal, a bus driver hurries back

a musician strikes sticks, faster and faster

cars honk along a street approaching a traffic circle

when he lowers his fan, the actor's face has changed from black to white

a child squats and shits in a palace courtyard

yellow construction cranes pivot over the tops of high-rise apartments

a woman throws a shuttle with green silk through the shed

where are we headed, you wonder, as you pick a lychee and start to peel it

3

Lightning ignites a fire in the wilderness: in hours,
200 then 2,000 acres are aflame; when a hotshot
crew hikes in to clear lines, a windstorm
kicks up and veers the blaze back, traps them,
and their fire shelters become their body bags.
Piñons in the hills have red and yellow needles
in a bamboo park, a woman dribbles liquefied sugar
onto a plate, and it cools, on a stick, in the form
of a butterfly; a man in red pants stills
then moves through the Crane position.
A droplet hangs at the tip of a fernwater
spills into another kettle; you visualize
how flames engulfed them at 50 miles per hour.
In the West, wildfires scar each summer
water beads on beer cans at a lunch counter
you do not want to see exploding propane tanks;
you try to root in the world, but events sizzle
along razor wire, along a snapping end of a power line.

4

Two fawns graze on leaves in a yard
as we go up the Pearl Tower, I gaze
through smog at freighters along the river.
A thunderstorm gathers: it rains and hails
on two hikers in the Barrancas; the arroyo
becomes a torrent, and they crouch for an hour.
After a pelting storm, you spark into flame
and draw the wax of the world into light
ostrich and emu eggs in a basket by the door,
the aroma of cumin and pepper in the air.
In my mouth, a blister forms then disappears.
At a teak table, with family and friends,
we eat Dungeness crab, but, as I break
apart shell a…