Archipelago /

It helps to know Zen and ancient Chinese poetry to appreciate this offbeat collection. But an existential feel for the absurd will do nicely. Sze's poems juxtapose nature images with state of mind in the classic Asian style--nice enough in English, as found in James Wright's later poems. But Sze adds a pop-culture element in almost every poem. An actress feigns death in "A Great Square Has No Corners"; an X ray melds with a luna moth in "X Ray"; and a coroner's outlines of bodies recall shadows in "Spring Snow." Tension involves words and phrases--some in English, some in Chinese. They pepper sequence poems "The Silk Road" and "Archipelago" and suggest, by juxtaposition, that all words lose meaning in translation. That is the Zen element, the exclusion of outside world and the focus on mind. Weaknesses are minor--too many heavy-handed passages in sequence poems "Steamers" and "Oolong" ("oolong means black dragon, but oo means crow and long means dragon"). If intentional, this is a formal fallacy backfiring on the poet. This impressive debut collection may be too elusive for a general audience. Recommended for large collections, upper-division undergraduate and above. M. Bugeja; Ohio University

Like the water between islands, Sze's poems inhabit the space between declaration and question (one of his strategies is to end a declarative sentence with a question mark), as if claiming the territory in between the observer's consciousness and another reality. In this remarkable, demanding collection, Sze's fifth, the poet's acts of awareness connect the seeming randomness of thoughts. Sze explicates those links, as on the back of a mirror ``three dragons swirl in mist and April air./ After sixteen years that first kiss/ still has a flaring tail.'' The laws and forms of reality are imbued with feeling: ``We think, had I this then that would/ but subjunctive form is surge and ache./ Yellow tips of chamis are flaring open./ I drop a jar of mustard, and it shatters in a wave.'' Like Emily Dickinson, Sze precisely seizes the natural world: ``The mycelium of a honey mushroom/ glows in the dark. What does a yellow/ Man On Horseback know of winter and spring?'' Exploring his Chinese American background, Sze transmutes the familiar to reveal the unexpected, and mines the unfamiliar to explicate the known. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved