Sight Lines | Litsy

Congratulations to Arthur Sze for becoming America‘s 25th Poet Laureate!

I was worried the position would go unfilled given all the federal cuts to the arts.

Dilara Let's hope it won't be rescinded... 1w

BC_Dittemore @Dilara right? My hope is that poetry is so low on the radar it won‘t even be noticed. Which, now as I write it, strikes me as sad. 1w

Dilara @BC_Dittemore Fingers crossed (but yes, i agree it's sad)! The fact that he wants to focus on translated poetry and isn't white might make him a target. I've only discovered his poetry the other day, but I really liked it. I hope it all goes well for him... 1w

BC_Dittemore @Dilara same. I just happened to need to return a library book, (I wasn‘t going to check anything out or even look, I swear… well, maybe I would just look, but they definitely won‘t have any of his work) and found Sight Lines. (Only gonna check it out; my TBR is crazy, but they do have this nice Rita Dove collection, oh and there‘s Gwendolyn Brooks…) 😅 (edited) 1w

7 likes4 comments

Dilara

Sight Lines | Arthur Sze

Someone on LibraryThing mentioned that Arthur Sze has been chosen as the new US poet laureate. Having never heard of him, I was curious and read the tagged collection on Everand. I loved it! Almost every distich or tercet creates a distinct, evocative image.
#poetry #nature

Pic by Ahmed abd elkader mohamed, CC BY-SA 4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

22 likes

DreesReads

Sight Lines | Arthur Sze

pick

The 2019 National Book Award for Poetry winner—and now I have read all of the finalists. This was not my favorite among the finalists, but it is solid. Sze lives in New Mexico, and most of the poems in this collection bring up the desert—the weather, flora and fauna, fire, seasons. Some focus on urban life, others on Sze‘s Chinese heritage. Mushrooms, peonies, and spotted towhees come up several times. #poetry #nationalbookaward

TiredLibrarian What was your favorite of the finalists? 6y

DreesReads @TiredLibrarian Deaf Republic! It was unlike any poetry collection I‘ve read before (though I am pretty much a poetry novice, I‘ve read more in the last 6 months than in the previous 6 years). 6y

TiredLibrarian @DreesReads I'll have to check it out; I know we have it at my library. I used to read a lot of poetry, but haven't read it much in the last few years and would like to get back into it.

Deaf Republic: Poems

DreesReads @TiredLibrarian do! I also really liked the more typical

I: New and Collected Poems

DreesReads More typical meaning it‘s more personal poems from a lifetime of work. I struggle to classify poetry and edited my book riot spreadsheet to have fiction/nonfiction/poetry because so often poetry feels like memoir or nature writing or current events. I fits into that. Deaf Republic is as much fiction as I‘ve ever felt poetry to be. Though it could be an allegory that went over my head. 6y

34 likes5 comments

Redwritinghood

Sight Lines | Arthur Sze

so-so

#Hoopla #NBApoetry2019 I found the poems in this collection difficult to connect with. While it seems that Sze was writing about transformation and impermanence, I often felt that the lines of the poems were somewhat random and didn‘t give a clear impression of the the author‘s meaning. Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for poetry. 3⭐️

vivastory I haven't read this one, but I have enormously enjoyed past collections such as

The Redshifting Web: New & Selected Poems

vivastory &

Quipu

Redwritinghood @vivastory Thanks. I‘ll see if I like those better. 6y

52 likes3 comments

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