The Library of Congress has named Arthur Sze as the recipient of this year's $10,000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, which honors the lifetime achievement of an American poet, based on the recommendation of an internal committee. Sze will receive his award on December 5, during an event in the Mumford Room of the Library's Madison Building.
In its citation, the committee wrote: "In 11 books and over more than 50 years, Arthur Sze has developed a signature lyricism of seeing. His poems focus on images and declarations--but they also move through breathtaking juxtapositions, create layers of fragments that open up rather than direct their readers. Sze's imaginative capaciousness pulls in languages, traditions and systems from both East and West, and it can speak to the cosmos then turn to the smallest natural detail. His latest collection, The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems, captures the range and the commitment of his life's work, to create 'points of connection, reflection, and refraction... part of an organic growing whole.' "
Sze is the author of 11 poetry collections, including Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago (1995), selected for an American Book Award. He has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon II (2024). His most recent book, The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021), received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation.
Sze's many honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.