Papyrus Pantoum

Arthur Sze

Coyotes surround a buck       staggering in the snow—under a rising moon, we step       along a ridge of white sand;sandhill cranes return in low Vs       and land in a cornfield—in Bolivia, they extract       lithium out of Altiplano salt fiats;under a rising moon,       we step along a ridge of white sand—“You burn me”       torn off papyrus wrapped around a corpse;in Bolivia they extract lithium       out of Altiplano salt flats—a claret cup cactus flowers       among sandstone rubble;“You burn me” torn       off papyrus wrapped around a corpse—rain makes quicksilver       strikes on the surface of a lake;a claret cup cactus       flowers among sandstone rubble—in twilight, we sway       and surge into flame;rain makes quicksilver strikes       on the surface of a lake—coyotes surround        a buck staggering in the snow;in twilight, we sway and surge        into flame—sandhill cranes return       in low Vs and land in a cornfield.

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Arthur Sze has just published two books: Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2025). His other books include The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry. He received the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.

Like wind on a lake, Arthur Sze’s twelfth book of poetry, Into the Hush, extends a language that ripples and stills, conjuring a cast of fruit trees and gunshots, butterflies and chemistry, animals and man. Drawing on a craft honed over decades of writing, these poems earn their profound simplicity, moving with imaginative power and emotional force. Sze harnesses a range of innovative forms to respond to the challenges of our nuclear age—endangered cultures and the exigencies of climate change—exploring what it means to write on a planet struggling against anthropocene, to “make lines/against a void.” Here poems shadow sonnets and appear as haibun and ekphrastic, epistle and twin pantoums. Poems borrow the voice of an eraser and the voice of a jaguar. Even the aspen leaves speak. Writing at the height of his powers, Into the Hush is a landmark publication. Sze enacts a thrilling journey from silence into sound, from emptiness into the rich panoply of existence.

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