“Pe’ahi Light”: Five Questions for Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze was born in December 1950 in New York City, and he now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he serves as Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He has written 11 poetry collections, including The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems; Sight Lines, which received the National Book Award for Poetry; and Compass Rose, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poem, “Pe’ahi Light,” was included in the 2020 volume of Best American Poetry.
Sze has been strongly influenced by his travels around the world and his interactions with other cultures. He shared that he “learn[s] best by meeting people. As a poet, travel has expanded and deepened my experience and helped shape my poetry. At one point, thanks to the Alaska Arts Council, I taught poetry classes with children of salmon fishermen on a rain forest island and lived on a float house that moved up and down with the tides.” His poetry is a journey that his readers get to experience in his prose.
When reading Sze’s “Pe’ahi Light,” one of the techniques that jumped out to me was his use of strikethroughs, such as those in the lines “from inside the bell gong of silence, and I spark when language love—1457, sudden unexpected attack or capture—surprises.” Initially these lines confused me and made me pause. And yet, somehow, I understood that they were adding deeper meaning to the poem. As I re-read the lines, I began to see the strikethroughs as revealing those words that humans first consider before readjusting, before deciding to choose more careful words to expressing their thoughts. It was a great experience to learn what Sze’s purpose behind the technique was, as this is one of the questions I presented to him.
Has travel influenced your writing? Do you think traveling is necessary to be a good writer?
Travel has had an enormous influence on my writing, but it is not necessary or essential to becoming a good writer. We are all travelers in time, and Emily Dickinson is an example of a poet who traveled in her imagination but who physically stayed put. That said, I learn best by meeting people. As a poet, travel has expanded and deepened my experience and helped shape my poetry. At one point, thanks to the Alaska Arts Council, I taught poetry classes with children of salmon fishermen on a rain forest island and lived on a float house that moved up and down with the tides. That personal experience literally found its way into many poems, but it also made me think, metaphorically, about how the ground we stand on is destabilized and shifting in ways we might not recognize or anticipate. So travel has helped make unanticipated surprises and discoveries possible.
Who has been the biggest influence in your life as a writer?
The single most meaningful influence on my life as a writer was Josephine Miles, a poet/teacher/mentor I had at the University of California at Berkeley. As an undergraduate student who transferred to UC Berkeley from MIT (I was a science dropout), I remember going to seek her advice. As a transfer student with science credits, and as a young poet who wanted to study classical Chinese in order to translate ancient Chinese poets into English, I didn’t know how I could ever find a suitable major and graduate. Josephine sponsored me and let me create my own major in poetry, so I could take whatever courses I wanted and still graduate on time. She once said, “You can take Swahili and political science if you want—someday you are going to be a poet.” That kind of confidence in me was awesome and transformative.
Nature is both beautiful and tragic in your poem “Pe’ ahi Light.” Could you describe your writing process and how your inspiration came to you?
My wife and I were invited to be an artists-in-residence at the Merwin Conservancy on Maui for a month, July-August 2022. It was a big change to relocate from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I was amazed at living in William and Paula Merwin’s former home in the middle of a palm forest on the north and wet side of the island. Every morning, I got up before sunrise and wrote at William’s former desk. The one piece of calligraphic writing on the wall, the Chinese character for heart/mind, became my talisman. With the idea of spirit, spontaneity, and also rigor embodied in the brushwork, I wrote every morning and incorporated walks and discoveries in the palm forest and on the island. I didn’t have any fixed idea of what might come, but, after writing for three weeks, I began to envision a poem in sections, and started to sift through all the phrases of poems to find what was essential.
In “Pe’ ahi Light,” you use a strikethrough technique. Is there a specific reason you use this technique with these words?
I use strikethrough lines for several reasons. I first stumbled into this technique when I was searching for a way to have a speaker, speaking under emotional pressure, say something and immediately revise what was said. I liked how strikethrough lines, with their revisions, created tension and how the juxtaposition of the words could enact the process of a speaker revising what was just spoken. The strikethrough lines thus have to do with accuracy: because the words are inaccurate, they are struck through, but because the words are necessary, they remain legible.
The poem starts very upbeat and whimsical but as the poem progresses the disposition changes. What was the reason there was such a subtle and quick change?
As I worked on “Pe’ahi Light,” I wanted to ground myself at the Merwin house, but I also wanted to be open to all experience. Each morning I wrote without knowing where the poem was going to go. As the poem emerged, I understood that the poem needed to be open to the darkness of human experience as well as to light, and I wanted to harness quick tonal shifts to help enact a process of surprise and discovery.