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Overview
From the current phenomenon of drawing calligraphy with water in public parks in China to Thomas Jefferson laying out dinosaur bones on the White House floor, from the last sighting of the axolotl to a man who stops building plutonium triggers, Sight Lines moves through space and time and brings the disparate and divergent into stunning and meaningful focus. In this new work, Arthur Sze employs a wide range of voices—from lichen on a ceiling to a man behind on his rent—and his mythic imagination continually evokes how humans are endangering the planet; yet, balancing rigor with passion, he seizes the significant and luminous and transforms these moments into riveting and enduring poetry.
“These new poems are stronger yet and by confronting time head on, may best stand its tests.” ―Lit Hub
“The wonders and realities of the world as seen through travel, nature walks, and daily routine bring life to the poems in Sight Lines.” ―Library Journal
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781556595592 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Copper Canyon Press |
| Publication date: | 04/09/2019 |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Sales rank: | 532,078 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Adamant
Deer browse at sunrise in an apple orchard,
while honey locust leaves litter the walk.
A neighbor hears gunshots in the bosque
and wonders who's firing at close range;
I spot bear prints near the Pojoaque River but see no sign of the reported mountain lion.
As chlorophyll slips into the roots of a cottonwood and the leaves burst into yellow gold, I wonder,
where's our mortal flare? You can travel
to where the Tigris and Euphrates flow together and admire the inventions of people living on floating islands of reeds; you can travel
along an archipelago and hike among volcanic pools steaming with water and sulfuric acid;
but you can't change the eventual, adamant body.
Though death might not come like a curare-
dipped dart blown out of a tube or slam at you like surf breaking over black lava rock,
it will come—it will come—and it unites us—
brother, sister, boxer, spinner—in this pact,
while you inscribe a letter with trembling hand.
Westbourne Street
Porch light illuminating white steps, light over a garage door, darkness inside windows—
and the darkness exposes the tenuous.
A glass blower shapes a rearing horse that shifts, on a stand, from glowing orange to glistening crystal; suddenly the horse
shatters into legs, head, body, mane.
At midnight, “Fucking idiot!” a woman yells,
shaking the house; along a hedge,
a man sleeps, coat over head, legs sticking out;
and, at 8 am, morning glories open on a fence; a backhoe heads up the street.
From this window, he views banana leaves,
an orange tree with five oranges, house with shingled roofs, and steps leading to an upstairs apartment; farther off, palm trees,
and, beyond, a sloping street, ocean, sky;
but what line of sight leads to revelation?
Black Center
Green tips of tulips are rising out of the earth—
you don’t flense a whale or fire at beer cans
in an arroyo but catch the budding tips of pear branches and wonder what
it’s like to live along a purling edge of spring.
Jefferson once tried to assemble a mastodon
skeleton on the White House floor but,
with pieces missing, failed to sequence the bones;
when the last speaker of a language dies,
a hue vanishes from the spectrum of visible light.
Last night, you sped past revolving and flashing red, blue, and white lights along the road—
a wildfire in the dark; though no one you knew was taken in the midnight ambulance,
an arrow struck a bull’s eye and quivered in its shaft: one minute gratitude rises
like water from an underground lake,
another dissolution gnaws from a black center.