It’s not unusual for students to get bored in class, but we’d be willing to bet that not many get so antsy in a lecture at in one school that they transfer to another to pursue a completely different area of study – much to their parents’ chagrin.
Such was the case of current U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze.
“I was a freshman at MIT, bored in a calculus lecture, and I wrote my first poem and decided very quickly that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “I had to reapply to colleges while I was at MIT, and at the end of my sophomore year, I transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and created my own major in poetry.”
If you go
WHAT: Santa Fe International Literary Festival
WHEN: Friday to Sunday
WHERE: Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy St., Santa Fe.
TICKETS: Prices and availability vary. Visit https://tinyurl.com/39cn252s.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit https://www.sfinternationallitfest.org
That move has resulted in Sze building a successful career as a poet: He’s won major awards for his work, served as poet laureate for Santa Fe and was recently appointed to a second consecutive term as U.S. poet laureate by the Library of Congress.
Sze, who lives in Santa Fe, will participate in the Santa Fe International Literary Festival this weekend, alongside authors including James McBride, Judy Blume, Carl Hiaasen and Ama Codjoe.
As U.S. poet laureate, Sze said his main task is to create a signature project. His first-term project was to celebrate poetry through poetry in translation. He put together the book, “Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry,” published by Copper Canyon Press. The book has 23 poems and “features translations from 13 languages and provides a personal guide to poetry in translation,” according to the Library of Congress.
His project for his second term will be “Words Bridging Worlds,” which, according to the Library of Congress, will take him on a tour of the country to “host public events, including readings, moderated discussions and workshops focused on poetry and translation.”
For people who might find reading poetry kind of intimidating, Sze said “Transient Worlds” can help because it is designed to widen and deepen the appreciation of poetry through translation.
“I taught for 22 years at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and I know many people feel that poetry is difficult, esoteric, hard to understand,” he said. “So one of the things my book does is introduce poems from different languages, and I present multiple translations. Then I actually invite the reader to make their own translation of some of the poems as a way that they can actually create a poem, but not feel like, ‘Oh my god, what am I going to say?’ Or it has to be really difficult. They already have a text at hand. They have three different translations in English. They have my commentary and discussion of the poem, and then if I ask them to translate it, I think that’s possible.”
He said the book is designed in 15 zones, so if people don’t have a lot of time, they can pick a particular language in poem, and in 45 minutes they could read that poem and make a translation. It’s his way of making poetry less intimidating, he said.
Sze said poetry doesn’t have to be daunting, in fact, it can be an important way to communicate – and can be a way to settle down in this hectic modern world.
“You can say so much with so few words. For me, it’s the most intense and musical form of language,” he said. “Many poems can be written in eight lines, 15 lines – it’s like a short story. You can say so much in so little time. I also think poetry has a vital role to play, because it requires that a reader slow down and say the poem aloud, listen to the sounds and the rhythm and feel it in your body. We live in such a fast-paced world, but we’re moving on the surface, and we sacrifice depth because of that. Poetry makes you slow down and deepen your experience and awareness.”
And for Sze, encouraging people to get into reading and writing poetry hasn’t been that tough a sell. In fact, he said he received a letter from a woman who said she had been working her way through “Transient Worlds” on a flight from Hawaii to Seattle.
“She picked a poem from ancient Chinese, and she read the three translations (and) my discussion, and she made a translation,” he said. “She said, ‘This is the first poem I’ve ever written.’ And she was really, really excited.”
katie@durangoherald.com
