Arthur Sze

Like wind on a lake, Arthur Sze’s twelfth book of poetry, Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), extends a language that ripples and stills, conjuring a cast of fruit trees and gunshots, butterflies and chemistry, animals and man.

Arthur joined us and read from this collection and other poems, and talked about his writing practice and the craft of poetry with our host, Meg Weston.

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Into the Hush

A magpie feather gleams in the grass;
today you are not having open-heart surgery,
nor are you strapped to a hospital bed,
inhaling oxygen; you do not mix cement
and sand in a wheelbarrow, nor did you sleep
the night in a field off an interstate highway.
This morning you live in a sparrow’s warble,
in pale green leaves trembling in sunshine.
You catch the curling wave of the day
where peas flower on a trellis, where apricot
blossoms tinge the tips of a hundred-year-old tree.
Weeding in the garden, you get stronger
as you dig; you become well, island, field;
out of nowhere, a rough-legged hawk
glides downward with outstretched wings;
aspen leaves flutter without wind. When you’ve
worked this long, your art is no longer art
but a wand that wakes your eyes to what is.