Good evening.
Welcome to the Poetry Center, and thank
you so much for being here.
It's my very great pleasure and honor, really,
to introduce Arthur Sze.
A very brief introduction.
Arthur Sze has published 10 books of poetry,
including Sight Lines, a National Book Award
finalist, Compass Rose, a Pulitzer Prize finalist,
The Ginkgo Light, selected for the PEN Southwest Book
Award, The Redshifting Web, Poems 1970 to 1998,
selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American
Literary Award, and Archipelago, selected for an American Book
Award.
He is also a celebrated translator
and released The Silk Dragon, Translations from the Chinese,
in 2001, selected for the Western States Book Award.
Sze is the recipient of many honors,
including the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers,
a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship,
two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing
Fellowships, and the Howard Foundation Fellowship.
I could go on and on.
Instead, I'll simply say that Sze's work
is widely admired for its exquisite layering of tone
and texture.
Its attunement to a plurality of perspectives.
Its engagement at the spectrum of sensory experience.
And its surprising juxtapositions, oftentimes
juxtapositions that bring the disparate into luminous focus.
Please join me in welcoming Arthur Sze.
[APPLAUSE]