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Magazine Parting WordsCulture

Wang Wei

By Arthur Sze

Spring 2021

At my window

the rain raves, raves about dying,

and does not

hear in the bamboo

a zither, which, plucked,

inebriates the birds

and brings closer to the heart

the moon.

♦

Arthur Sze, “Wang Wei” from The Glass Constellation: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1976 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Arthur Sze is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Sight Lines, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2019, and Compass Rose, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Sze has received many other honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico.