An Interview with Arthur Sze
2004; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 50; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-5804
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Communication, and Education
ResumoMy first encounter with poetry of Arthur Sze was in now defunct journal Countermeasures. The poem, titled Six Persimmons, (1) seemed to me to be a perfect balance between surreal and rational, two forms of thought that we are often forced to reconcile in face of a world that refuses to make sense despite our best efforts. In this sense, Sze is a deeply humanist poet. And his poems are aids in constructing what Aristotle calls universal event. This interview is a testament to Sze's principled care: his care about poetry and about how poetry helps us place ourselves in world. ********** Your books contain many long serial poems. What does writing a poetic sequence afford you--other than breadth and wider possibility--that you cannot achieve with a non-sequential short or long poem? I believe poetic sequence is form of our time--mutable, capable of shifting voice as well as location, open to a variety of rhythms and structures. I have been drawn to poetic sequence because it enables me to develop a that intensifies as well as enlarges scope and resonance of a poem. The word complexity is etymologically derived from braiding together: I like to braid lyric, dramatic, and narrative elements and utilize them simultaneously. In writing a sequence--in contrast to a non-sequential short or long poem--I can make juxtaposition a more active structural principle. Because there are gaps--and here I think of spaces as charged points of transformation--the point of focus can shift dramatically from one section to another. Within a single line, there can be juxtaposition between image and image; there can be juxtaposition between lines; and there can be juxtaposition between sections. When one section is juxtaposed to another section, a larger and deeper interaction takes place. To make this clear, it might be helpful to look at last two sections of my poem, Archipelago. One of threads running through this sequence is a Pueblo ceremony: near end of a social dance, there is often a throw, where dancers objects (such as candy, cassette tapes, paper towels, etc.) out to audience. The audience collects these objects, connects with dancers, and thereby completes ceremony. To complete poem, and also book, I designed a series of images that would be a throw to reader. Section seven, which is block-like, ends with: The dancers reappear and enter plaza in two lines. Shifting feet in rhythm to shifting drumming, they approach crowd under yellow cottonwood. And section eight begins: Mating above cattails, red dragonflies-- sipping litchi tea, eating fried scallion pancakes-- bamboo slivers under fingernails-- And it ends with: dancers are throwing licorice, sunflower seeds, pot scrubbers, aprons, plastic bowls. Between end of section seven and beginning of section eight, I wanted to dissolve any literal connection between dancers and objects they throw. The space between sections is thus pivotal in that it releases throw of images from a literal context. In this figurative throw, I am intensifying focus onto each line, where white spaces are active. In employment of juxtaposition, I sometimes use it within a single line: for instance, in section nine, black, blak, blaec is name for word black in contemporary English, Middle English, and Old English. The words are homonyms--they all sound same--yet spelling shifts so that attention is turned from present toward past. That perspective helps set up two lines: following thread / of recollection through a lifetime--. This two-line stanza is then juxtaposed with, the passions becoming chiming sounds of jade. I hope each of these lines has a clarity and energy reminiscent of Japanese haiku, but their juxtapositions create a unique complex. …
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