An interview with Arthur Sze in Summer 2001 To order books at bn.com by Arthur Sze ________ The photo of Arthur Sze was taken by Daryl Black. All rights reserved.

Arthur Sze Earthstar Opening the screen door, you find a fat spider poised at the threshold. When I swat it, hundreds of tiny crawling spiders burst out. What space in the mind bursts into waves of wriggling light? As we round a bend, a gibbous moon burnishes lava rocks and waves. A wild boar steps into the road, and around another bend, a mongoose darts across our headlights. As spokes to a hub, the very far converges to the very near. A row of Siberian irises buds and blooms in the yard behind our bedroom. A moth flutters against a screen and sets off a light. I had no idea carded wool spun into yarn could be dipped and oxidized into bliss. Once, hunting for chanterelles in a meadow, I flushed quail out of the brush. Now you step on an unexpected earthstar, and it bursts in a cloud of brown spores into June light. The Angle of Incidence Whatever he sees when awake is death— she wants a juicy apricot, or a pen that writes upside down, under water, in outer space; he wants a fluted champagne glass, spiffy sunglasses; he wants to see the endangered Cloudcroft butterfly close then open its wings; under a one-seeded juniper, dogs sniff an exposed carcass; he sees a red plastic container with syringes, needles, snapped vials; they feel the warmth of the room when candles burn surge in their bodies; he sees that—Shang bronze in the shape of a boar— wherever he turns, wherever he looks, the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence. Spring Smoke The minutes ooze into a honeycomb gold. He reads in a recently discovered notebook that in 1941 his grandfather refused to collaborate with the puppet government and was kidnapped in Shanghai, held in a smoky loft where he breathed through a hole in the roof while his captors unloaded, reloaded, revolvers, played mahjong. He stops to adjust the light, wonders if the wasp nest lodged on a beam in the shed is growing. His grandfather describes a woman who refused to tell where her husband was until they poured scalding water down her throat and crushed her right hand in a vise. He looks up but cannot see stars through the skylight. He senses smoky gold notes rising out of a horn and knows how easy it is to scald, blister, burst. This morning when he pulled back a wood slat to open a gate, he glimpsed a young pear tree blossoming in the driveway. Now he stops and, in the gold hush, is startled to hear his blood circulating.