Archipelago

Arthur Sze

Archipelago was the winner of the 1996 American Book Award in Poetry. By turns spiritual and creative, meditative and active, Archipelago draws upon both Buddhist and Native American art and culture and is inspired by the Zen garden at Ryōan-ji. The fifteen poems, like stones set in a sea of raked gravel, are seen only within the context of a larger interdependence.

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ISBN: 9781556591006

Format: Paperback

In Your Honor

In your honor, a man presents a sea bass
tied to a black-lacquered dish by green-spun seaweed.

“Ah” is heard throughout the room:
you are unsure what is about to happen.

You might look through a telescope at the full
bright moon against deep black space,

see from the Bay of Dew to the Sea of Nectar,
but, no, this beauty of naming is a subterfuge.

What are the thoughts of hunters driving
home on a Sunday afternoon empty-handed?

Their conception of honor may coincide
with your conception of cruelty? The slant

of light as sun declines is a knife
separating will and act into infinitely thin
and lucid slices. You look at the sea bass’s eye,
clear and luminous. The gills appear to move

ever so slightly. The sea bass smells
of dream, but this is no dream. “Ah,

such delicacy” is heard throughout the room,
and the sea bass suddenly flaps. It

bleeds and flaps, bleeds and flaps as
the host slices slice after slice of glistening sashimi.

About the Author

Arthur Sze has published eleven books of poetry, including Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award, and The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021). His other books include Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; Quipu (2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998, selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago …

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Reviews

“Sze’s fifth collection translates the poet’s spiritual quest into memorable imagery.” —Library Journal

“There are very few books of poetry that hold such a variety of passion… for language, texture, ideas, morals, suffering, conflicts, and for the world’s beauty—in such compassionate and graceful form.” —Bloomsbury Review