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Title: The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 by Arthur Sze ISBN: 1-55659-088-1 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The world in a grain of sand
Comment: If you don't know Sze's work, this is a good place to start, and if you do it's a fine "Best of" collection with a few new poems added. I liked it a great deal, and kept picking it up and rereading some of the poems. However, Sze isn't one of my favorite poets, and after some thought I finally decided why. He belongs to the school of poets (both Western and Eastern) who see everything in the universe as interconnected and every part, from a dragonfly to a planet, as emblematic of the whole. In some of his more recent poems, I felt that he just presented lengthy lists of objects or events (however memorably described) and left it up to the reader to make the connection between them. While often the result can be enlightening, for me this sometimes injected too much intellectual effort into the process of appreciating a poem -- which, to my way of thinking, should be more like a lightning flash that illuminates the whole landscape. Also, the specificity of some of his allusions troubled me. He'll briefly mention an event that loomed large in local news, so I (as a local) will have an intense reaction to it -- but does he expect someone from (say) Dubuque to have as strong a reaction? Which reaction did he intend when he mentioned that event, and how does that affect the way a reader "takes" the whole poem? Again, his ex-wife is a well-known Hopi weaver; does knowing about this emotional connection change the way you read some of his allusions to Hopi beliefs? At one point he mentions her pulverizing bugs in a blender -- is the reader supposed to think that she's practicing a refined form of cruelty to insects, or are we expected to recognize that she's making cochineal dye? (He provides footnotes, but they're mostly translations of local Spanish words he uses.) In short, is my "local knowledge" something he calculated into the poem, or is it getting in the way of the effect he really wants? With a poet who's more explicit about what he/she expects you to "get" from the poem, the issue doesn't arise for me, but in this style of poetry I find his reticence rather confusing. Still, this collection is well worth reading and thoroughly enjoyable.
Rating: 5
Summary: Sze goes where and when he pleases
Comment: Arthur Sze introduces the reader to an original way of thinking embodied in the the old Hua Yen school of Buddhism. Hua Yen (Kegon in Japan) believes all places and times exist in all other places and times. Events are a reflection of an infinite set of dimensions -- each one relfelcted in the other. The "Redshifting Web" a collection of Sze's poetry has the sensibility of infinite dimension universal life, not a common perspective in any poet. If your are interested in this viewpoint you should look into the "Flower Ornament Scripture" a tanslation of a Buddhist sutra by Thomas Cleary. Another poet with a similar, but more zen/dadistic-inspired vista is Takahashi in "The of Triumph of the Sparrow." If you want to see and hear more ---Sze is your man.
The mouse has a white eye where the river rages not far from the orange on your table...
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Title: Bellocq's Ophelia : Poems by Natasha Trethewey ISBN: 1555973590 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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