American poet (born 1950)
Arthur Sze (; Chinese: 施家彰; pinyin: Shī Jiāzhāng; born December 1, 1950) is an American poet, translator, and professor. Since 1972, he has published ten collections of poetry. Sze's ninth collection Compass Rose (2014) was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Sze's tenth collection Sight Lines (2019) won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry.
Sze was the first Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he resides and is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Early life and education
Sze is a second-generation Chinese American, born in New York City on December 1, 1950.[1] His parents initially immigrated to the United States following the Japanese occupation of China, and remained in the U.S. after the Chinese Civil War reignited.[2] He was raised in Queens and Garden City on Long Island.[2][1] Sze graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1968. Between 1968 and 1970, Sze attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1970, he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to pursue poetry.[1]
Career
His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, Mānoa, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and the Virginia Quarterly Review,[3] and have been translated into Albanian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, and Turkish. He has authored eight books of poetry, including Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). This latter volume was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.[4]
He has been included in anthologies such as Articulations: The Body and Illness in Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 1994), Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, (Kaya Production, 1995), I Feel a Little Jumpy around You (Simon & Schuster, 1996), What Book!?: Buddhist Poems from Beats to Hiphop (Parallax Press 1998), and American Alphabets (Oberlin College Press, 2006).
He was a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College, and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, and Naropa University. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe and has won three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.[citation needed]
In 2012, Sze was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.[5]
Reception
The poet Jackson Mac Low has said: "The word 'compassion' is much overused, 'clarity' less so, but Arthur Sze is truly a poet of clarity and compassion." Albuquerque Journal reviewer John Tritica: commented that Sze "resides somewhere in the intersection of Taoist contemplation, Zen rock gardens and postmodern experimentation." Critic R.W. French notes that Sze's poems "are complex in thought and perception; in language, however, they have the cool clarity of porcelain. The surface is calm, while the depths are resonant. There is about these poems a sense of inevitability, as though they could not possibly be other than what they are. They move precisely through their patterns like a dancer, guided by the discipline that controls and inspires."[6]
Personal life
Sze he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Carol Moldaw, and their daughter.[7] Sze also has a son from a previous marriage.[2]
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