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Arthur Sze

Arthur Sze was born December 1, 1950, in New York City, to parents who were Chinese immigrants. He was initially drawn to poetry during his senior year of high school when he read T.S. Eliot and was exposed

Shore of This Day, The

by Arthur Sze (b. 1950)

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15

You walk on a path lined with palm fronds,
and mosquitoes swarm, but no, not yet—
once, before you stepped into a rainforest,
a cloud of mosquitoes rose in the clearing;
when the cloud dissipated, you headed
to a temple where you climbed the steps,
and, reaching the pinnacle, surveying
a canopy of ceiba trees, saw other temples
overrun by vegetation. That night, noises

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May 10

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

How was it that Caedmon, the Anglo-Saxon author of one of the only extant pieces of Old English poetry, became a poet?

Answer

According to the Venerable Bede, Caedmon was an illiterate laborer who would flee banquets when the revelers would pass around a harp and sing. One time, having fled to the barn, he received in a dream the gift of poetry. However, this gift could only be used towards devotional poetry. As a result we have his hymns, but none of the wild lyrics sung by his co-revelers.

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