Arthur Sze Boeken

In his National Book Award-winning tenth collection Sight Lines, Arthur Sze lends the reader his prismatic lens, rendering contemporary reality in stunning complexity. Moments of grace, eros, and beauty are braided with shudders of terror and threats of ecological destruction, as Sze moves nimbly through intersections of the disparate and divergent. Using formal disruption, legible erasure, and a diversity of voices—lichen on a ceiling, salt on the table, a man behind on his rent—each page transmutes simplicity into simultaneity, and chaos into compelling song. Sze is a Pulitzer finalist and a widely-revered poet, whose exquisite craft continues to expand our view: there are “so many / worlds to this world.”

National Book Award-winner Arthur Sze presents a one-of-a-kind anthology that vividly traces Chinese poetry from its centuries-old lyrical traditions up to the present day. 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.