10 Questions for Arthur Sze
- By Emily Wojcik
Stopping to catch my breath on a switchback,
I run my fingers along the leaves of a yucca:
each blade curved, sharp, radiating from a core —
in this warmest of Novembers, the dead
push out of thawing permafrost: in a huge
blotch of black ink that now hangs, framed. . .
—from “Ravine,” from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of my earliest poems was titled “Li Po.” In the Tang dynasty, Li Po supposedly reached over the side of a boat to embrace the reflection of the full moon on the water and fell in and drowned. The poem I wrote, like many ancient Chinese poems, has no “I” in the poem: it was about being out on the water.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
My translation work, from ancient to contemporary Chinese poetry, has been a strong influence. It was helpful for me to translate poems by Wen Yiduo (1899-1946), a Chinese Modernist, who knew the classical tradition but broke it apart.
What other professions have you worked in?
In my twenties, I did construction work and did a lot of plastering on adobe houses.
What inspired you to write this piece?
I started with hiking on a trail, where I noticed how warm it was so late in November. That observation led me to consider how, in the arctic, bones of the dead are pushing out of the ground. I can’t say I knew where my writing was headed. I recalled a number of deceased friends, and one, the Misty poet, Gu Cheng, stuck in my mind. A month before starting on this poem, I participated in a poetry reading with poets from China that was held at the University of Oklahoma. On a library wall, I was startled to see a big splotch of calligraphy. I couldn’t read it and asked Jonathan Stalling, my host, what it was: he said it was the character “Fate,” and that Gu Cheng wrote it.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
I have lived in Santa Fe for forty-six years, and the landscape of Northern New Mexico is an indelible influence on my writing.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
My favorite time to write is early in the morning, before dawn and into the sunrise. In order to get a good start, I like to make coffee the night before and fill a thermos.
Who typically gets the first read of your work?
Over the last few years, Jim Moore has frequently been the first reader of my work.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I would be a painter.
What are you working on currently?
I am writing one poem at a time and am wondering if a thread will emerge that will string all the new poems together into one book-length sequence.
What are you reading right now?
I have just started reading Inger Christensen’s selected essays, The Condition of Secrecy, translated by Susana Nied (New Directions, 2018) and came across this wonderful opening to an essay: “Silk is a noun. All nouns are very lonely. They’re like crystals, each enclosing its own little piece of our knowledge about the world.”
ARTHUR SZE'S tenth book of poetry, Sight Lines, will be published in early 2019 by Copper Canyon Press. He is a recipient of the Jackson Poet Prize from Poets & Writers and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017.
