Quipu

July 25, 2005
Quipu are knotted cords used for record-keeping in Inca civilization, and, Sze reminds us, by the ancient Chinese. As in earlier work, Sze (The Redshifting Web
) weaves together details from nature (especially from New Mexico, where he lives), questions from philosophy, and discoveries from modern physics, collecting facts with a Thoreau-like patience. To the hints of Taoism some readers have found in his previous work, Sze adds a focus on domestic life and erotic love. Liminal encounters between people and animals, lovers and strangers, even rocks, fish and sky, create a poetry of simultaneity, and a contemplative mindset: "A moment in the body," he writes, "is beauty's memento mori: when I rake gravel in/ a courtyard, or sweep apricot leaves off a deck,/ I know an inexorable inflorescence." Sometimes Sze has trouble putting his details together, letting the poems and sequences go on too long, or degenerate into mere lists. As in the verse of Charles Wright, however, powers of observation give the best poems and sequences undeniable energies, whether considering a bowl, a candle or a tile in Sze's own living room, or else watching as "a broad-tailed hummingbird whirs in the air—/ and in a dewdrop on a mimosa leaf/ is the day's angular momentum."

October 15, 2005
A quipu is an assemblage of variegated, knotted cords used by the ancients for recording and calculation. In metaphorically applying the possibilities of the quipu to poetry, Sze ("The Redshifting Web") weaves a shifting, shimmering fabric of images and instances, a vibrant homage to what Stevens called -the intricacies of appearance. - If, as Sze writes, -The mind is new each day, - then the things of this world afford endless opportunity for its replenishment and wonder: -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? - With Ashberian spontaneity, Sze allows his surroundings to channel, then redirect his focus ( -I try to see a bald eagle rest in a Douglas fir/ but catch my sleeve on thorns, notice blackberries -). But if the flow of his attentions seems randomly determined, his goal (evocative of both Stevens and Zen) is an imaginative harmony: -The mind is a tuning fork/ that we strike, and struck, in the syzygy/ of a moment, / we find the skewed, tangled/ passions of a day begin to straighten, align, hum. - Engaged with the quotidian across the spectrum of its manifestations, Sze recovers marvels in troubling times. For larger poetry collections." -Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2005
The knotted strings of a quipu, a Peruvian abacuslike device, are the defining threads of connection in Sze's new collection. Whether incorporating nature, philosophy, history, or science, Sze's poems are expansive. They unfold like the time-slowed cinematic recording of a flower's blooming: the seed of an idea is germinated, thought or feeling buds, then the poem blooms entire. Sze has a refreshingly original sensibility and style, and he approaches writing like a collagist by joining disparate elements into a cohesive whole. This approach feels simultaneously familiar and radical because the poems are distilled to essentials we can grasp (an object, a sensation, a thought), but arranged in such odd order that readers will naturally want to search for associative meaning. This quality may make Sze's poems seem too abstract or confounding to some readers. Yet, if one simply allows the poems in (in the same breathlike way Sze inhales the world, filters it through his perception, and exhales it back), they will resonate in surprising ways.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)