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National Book Foundation > Author > Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of ten books of poetry and is a Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. More about this author >
In this new work, Arthur Sze employs a wide range of voices―from lichen on a ceiling to a man behind on his rent―and his mythic imagination continually evokes how humans are endangering the planet; yet, balancing rigor with passion, he seizes the significant and luminous and transforms these moments into riveting and enduring poetry. More about this book >
Arthur Sze has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines; Compass Rose, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light, winner of the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; Quipu; The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, winner of the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago, winner of the American Book Award. He has also published one book of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon, selected for the Western States Book Award. Sze is the recipient of many honors, including the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. His poems have been translated into a dozen languages, including Chinese, Dutch, German, Korean, and Spanish. Sze was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2017 and served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.