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But I’m also interested in reading through the poems, thinking about the architecture and how certain patterns repeat. Sze: I’m enjoying reading Adrian Matejka’s new book, Somebody Else Sold the World, and it’s easy to point to musicality and improvisation as signature strengths of his.

#DRAGON SPLAYER MAGAZINE ARCHIVE#

And that poem is part of our permanent archive on. And I find it a marvelous poem, so I want to send readers to that. And she gets to say really large, fundamentally powerful things that are harnessed, that come by surprise through looking again at this stream of minnows. And I love how it moves from the visible to the invisible world how, in its syntax, it enacts a swaying and large, deep, generous vision of life. And it’s a short poem it’s a marvelous poem that begins with observing a stream of minnows. Sze: I would direct readers to the poem “ Prayer” by Jorie Graham. If you could direct readers to one poem in our collection at that you haven’t curated, what would it be and why? And so, poets from other time periods in China came to me, and over time, those translations gave me many ideas for my own poetry. And that was a really fruitful time to turn to translation and to look at someone else’s work and sort of dive into their worldview and their vision and world. It wasn’t something I planned, but I just loved these ancient poems and, in translating them, I feel like I learned my craft because I got to think about how these poems were constructed.Īnd, over time, I discovered that when I finished a book of my own poetry, I oftentimes felt exhausted and wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t go to graduate school and I oftentimes feel like I learned my craft through translating ancient Chinese poems. Sze: My work in translation has been really important to my own work as a poet. Can you talk a bit about how your own work in translation has influenced your poetic style? : Now, some of our readers may know that you are a poet who has translated poetry from Chinese, particularly for your book Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese, published by Copper Canyon Press.

It seems to me one of the great things about American poetry right now is its energy and diversity, and in many ways, I was looking to curate or to search for many different kinds of poems. And I also wanted to reach out to poets with just very distinctive styles. I also wanted to include some poets who had never had the opportunity to be included in Poem-a-Day before. So that’s a quite wide and interesting range.

And I was interested in considering how translation work might influence their own poetry, whether it would be overt or in subtle influences.Īnd, in this month’s group of poets, there are poets who translate from ancient Chinese, modern Chinese, ancient Greek, Spanish, French, and Muskogee.

And it seems to me it’s a particularly rich period right now in American poetry, when so many poets are also practicing translators. Sze: I started by considering poets who are also translators. How did you approach curating Poem-a-Day? Arthur, welcome and thank you for joining me today. Arthur is the author of The Glass Constellations: New and Collected Poems and Sight Lines. I’m Mary Sutton, senior content editor at the Academy, and I’m here today with Arthur Sze. : Welcome to the Guest Editor Q&A, hosted by the Academy of American Poets. In this short Q&A, Arthur Sze discusses his curatorial approach and his own creative work. In 2022, the Academy of American Poets invited twelve poets to each curate a month of poems.

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