ceiling lights & chandeliers
the ginkgo light
p classically elegant . the new york times book review p szes free verse emphasizes at once how difficult and how necessary it is for us to imagine our world as a system whose ecologies and societies require us to care for all their interdependent parts . publishers weekly p szes list laden sequences capture the worlds manifold facts one by one then through discursive commentary exact from them a sense not only of aesthetic order but of universal cause and effect . boston review p sze ... here captures the energy of life in overshadowed daily events ... his poems mine everything from geography history and biology to philosophy and nature interweaving them to create a complex and luminous poetic texture ... his poetry is an experience of awakening and pleasure that all serious students of contemporary poetry should have . library journal p whether incorporating nature philosophy history or science szes poems are expansive . they unfold like the time slowed cinematic recording of a flowers blooming ... sze has a refreshingly original sensibility and style and he approaches writing like a collagist by joining disparate elements into a cohesive whole . booklist p a temple near the hypocenter of the atomic blast at hiroshima was disintegrated but its ginkgo tree survived to bud and bloom . arthur sze extends this metaphor of survival and perseverance to transform the worlds factual darkness into precarious splendor . each hour teems sze writes as he ingeniously integrates the worlds miraculous and mundane a woodpecker drilling a utility pole or a 1300 year old lotus seed into a moving visionary journey . p mayans charted venuss motion across the sky br poured chocolate into jars and interred them br with the dead . a woman dips three bowls into br hairs fur glaze places them in a kiln anticipates br removing them red hot to a shelf to cool . br when samba melodies have dissipated into air br when lights wrapped around a willow have vanished br what pattern of shifting lines leads to duration p arthur sze one of americas leading poets is the author of nine books of poetry and translation . he is professor emeritus of creative writing at the institute of american indian arts and just completed a term as poet laureate of santa fe new mexico .