Arthur Sze

Arthur Sze is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has spanned almost five decades. Born in New York City in 1950, he was raised by his Chinese-born parents in Beijing, Taiwan, and the United States. After graduating from Tufts University, he earned his M.A. from the University of Arizona as well as a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sze has published a total of nine individual collections of poetry to date, along with numerous chapbooks and contributions to a variety of poetry anthologies. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Poetry, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and American Poetry Review. His poetry is characterized by its experimental and stylistically modern bent, often combining naturalistic and surrealistic imagery. Sze’s themes range from the personal to the political, exploring one’s place in the universe and our relationship to time.

In 1992, Sze received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1994, he became a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. In 2018, he was awarded the honorable Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

The Upside Down

The Upside Down is Sze’s ninth book of poetry, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. The book is divided into two sections, each containing six poems.

The first section of The Upside Down, entitled “Anima,” consists of six poems exploring the relationship between the mind and environment. These poems are written in Sze’s characteristic style, combining surrealistic imagery with a scholarly sensibility, as he meditates on the stories of energy and space. In “Anima,” Sze examines the inner and outer planes of consciousness and the transformative power of language.

The second section of The Upside Down, entitled “Onomatopoeia,” consists of six poems in which Sze explores the power of language to describe and process the world around us. In these pieces, Sze examines the inner realm of things and how the act of naming creates meaning and the presence of the divine. The poems in this section frequently employ metamorphosis and personification as a tool to explore an individual’s power to shape reality.

Sze’s work has been praised for its piercing, precise, and expansive vision of the world. His final collection, The Upside Down, is no exception, and continues to move readers as it dives deep into the mystery of existence. By combining his own philosophical reflections and spiritual insights, Sze has crafted a thoughtful and interwoven poetic exploration of identity, language, and existence. As one reviewer exclaimed, The Upside Down is a “litmus test of beauty and ambiguity, of astonishment and heat.”