Former poet laureate wins award

Former Santa Fe Poet Laureate Arthur Sze had no idea someone had nominated him for the Jackson Poetry Prize until he got a call at home Wednesday.

“I was totally stunned,” he said. “I was just in shock.”

Previous winners have included Elizabeth Alexander, who read a poem at Barack Obama’s first inaugural. Poets & Writers is a nonprofit organization founded in 1970. It sponsors readings and workshops and publishes a bimonthly magazine.

The win was well-timed; on Wednesday Sze will fly to Yangzhou, China, and the International Poets Gathering at Slender West Lake to read from his work.

Sze taught at the Institute of American Indian Art for 23 years before retiring in 2006. The $50,000 prize will help with travel expenses to readings and workshops, he said.

“I’ll probably get a car,” he added. “It’s a wonderful gift.”

The Jackson Poetry Prize was established in 2006 and is named for the family of philanthropists John and Susan Jackson.

The prize is designed to provide what all poets need-the time and encouragement to write. Nominees are identified by a group of poets selected by Poets & Writers who remain anonymous. Final judging is made by a panel of “esteemed poets,” the website states.

Judges and poets Reginald Gibbons, Nathasha Tretheway and C.D. Wright.

In the judge’s citation of Sze’s work on the organization’s website, they said, “Everything can happen in the teeming space of a stanza by Arthur Sze; almost everything does. The profane and the glorious are never far apart; more often than not they are contained in the same couplet.

“The impression of land and sky on mind and mind on the mess we tend to make of things is seldom brought to such an exquisite degree of awareness. In exacting language, Sze has brought his gleaming perceptions and looming concerns to a rare quality of order.”

Sze’s eight books include “The Ginko Light” and “The Redshifting Web.” A new collection called “Compass Rose” is slated for next year.

Looking back on the Muckleshoot Reservation from Galisteo Street, Santa Fe

The bow of a Muckleshoot canoe, blessed

with eagle feather and sprig of yellow cedar,

is launched into a bay. A girl watches

her mother fry venison slabs in a skillet —

drops of blood sizzle, evaporate. Because

a neighbor feeds them, they eat wordlessly;

the silence breaks when she occasionally

gags, reaches into her throat, pulls out hair.

Gone is the father, riled, arguing with his boss,

who drove to the shooting range after work;

gone the accountant who embezzled funds,

displayed a pickup, and proclaimed a winning

flush at the casino. You donate chicken soup

and clothes but never learn if they arrive

at the south end of the city. Your small

acts are sandpiper tracks in wet sand.

Newspapers, plastic containers, beer bottles

fill the bins along this sloping one-way street.

Arthur Sze