Art as Inheritance

Poetry is my inheritance. My dad, raised by Scottish immigrants in New York City, was taught by Catholic nuns to memorize poetry. He passed the practice on to me; I remember standing at the edge of the Pecos Wilderness as a child, repeating the lines of “The Fairies,” by William Allingham, until I could recite it by heart.

Arroyo Lessons

I write letters to my father, the riverbed, when I need answers that mother can’t give. Father empty stream, father arroyo, who houses the rattlesnake beneath his wind-smoothed stones. Father imminent danger, the flash flood, the whipping monsoon mud froth, father aftermath in ribbons of ruined earth.

What Happens to the Land, Happens to the People

Indigenous Artists in the Movement to Protect Their Homelands Embedded in the mountainscape are pages from a large-scale printing of the Declaration of Independence. The bottom half of the pages are intentionally singed as they meld into distinctly pueblo black and white line work, accentuated by two cornstalks and a prickly-pear cactus at the center with ripe red fruit, seemingly ready for picking.

A selection of Arthur Sze’s poetry

LeaflessSunlight strikes the leafless aspen branches,strikes the white picket fence, and as Ilook at highlighted edges, my eyes sting.Tufted grass stalks sway in the flooding rays,and, in the poinsettia of this hour, I needsome darkness to bloom: in this spacea snow leopard leaps among rocks,the rosettes of its fur a moving landscape;its hunger scents the air.