Live! at the Library: Bobbitt Prize Event with Arthur Sze

From the organizers:

The Library of Congress will award the 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to National Book Award winner Arthur Sze for lifetime achievement in poetry.

Sze of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will receive the prize on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 6:30 p.m. during an event in the Mumford Room of the Library’s Madison Building. The event is free, and registration is open to the public. Sze will also give a short talk on poetry, followed by a moderated discussion with Rob Casper, the Library’s head of poetry and literature.

Sze’s presentation is titled “Lines of Sight, and Beyond.” In it he will braid some of his poems with details about his evolution as a poet, insights about his creative process and ideas of exploration and freedom in context of the American experience.

The 2024 Bobbitt Prize was awarded for lifetime achievement in poetry by the Librarian of Congress, based on the recommendation of an internal committee.

“In 11 books and over more than 50 years, Arthur Sze has developed a signature lyricism of seeing. His poems focus on images and declarations – but they also move through breathtaking juxtapositions, create layers of fragments that open up rather than direct their readers. Sze’s imaginative capaciousness pulls in languages, traditions and systems from both East and West, and it can speak to the cosmos then turn to the smallest natural detail,” the committee wrote in its citation for Sze. “His latest collection, ‘The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems,’ captures the range and the commitment of his life’s work, to create ‘points of connection, reflection, and refraction . . . part of an organic growing whole.’”

To register for this event, visit: https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/91097920/liveat-the-librarybobbitt-prize-event-with-arthur-sze-washington-events-from-the-library-of-congress__;!!EDx7F7x-0XSOB8YS_BQ!aWy5GpKF81XIsiehWaNwtQ7u6svwojAx4zn6-HplrjVbYAB8AeYirk2HB6Bt4V9sb7wDkif6p5K_AV0zgcQ19zw$

To read the full article, visit: https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/library-of-congress-awards-bobbitt-poetry-prize-to-arthur-sze/s/a34cdce4-d123-4524-8447-528d9506fd93