Arthur Sze: 'The Ginkgo Light'
A temple near the hypocenter of the atomic blast at Hiroshima was disintegrated, but its ginkgo tree survived to bud and bloom. Arthur Sze extends this image of survival and flowering to transform the world's factual darkness into precarious splendor. Sze is the author of nine books of poetry, including "Quipu," "The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese," "The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998," and "Archipelago," all from Copper Canyon Press. Sze's poems have appeared internationally in numerous publications and have been translated into Albanian, Bosnian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish. He was poet laureate of Santa Fe from 2006 to 2008.