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Into the Hush
*Winner of the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry for Lifetime Achievement*
With imaginative power and emotional force, Into The Hush explores the exigencies of climate change, of endangered cultures, and of our nuclear age.
Like wind on a lake, Arthur Sze’s twelfth book of poetry, Into the Hush, extends a language that ripples and stills, widens and deepens. Through an earned and profound simplicity, these poems move with imaginative power and emotional force and gather a startling array of contrasts—from wildfires to a sprig of sunrise, from gunshots to a spirit evoked by swaying candles—to address the challenges of our nuclear age. Here, poems shadow sonnets and appear as haibun and ekphrasis, pantoum and segmented zuihitsu. They borrow the voice of an eraser and the voice of a jaguar. Even the aspen leaves speak. Sze harnesses a range of innovative forms to respond to the challenges of climate change, exploring what it means to live on an endangered planet. Written at the height of his powers, Into the Hush is a landmark publication. Sze enacts a thrilling journey from silence into sound, from emptiness into the rich panoply of existence.
With imaginative power and emotional force, Into The Hush explores the exigencies of climate change, of endangered cultures, and of our nuclear age.
Like wind on a lake, Arthur Sze’s twelfth book of poetry, Into the Hush, extends a language that ripples and stills, widens and deepens. Through an earned and profound simplicity, these poems move with imaginative power and emotional force and gather a startling array of contrasts—from wildfires to a sprig of sunrise, from gunshots to a spirit evoked by swaying candles—to address the challenges of our nuclear age. Here, poems shadow sonnets and appear as haibun and ekphrasis, pantoum and segmented zuihitsu. They borrow the voice of an eraser and the voice of a jaguar. Even the aspen leaves speak. Sze harnesses a range of innovative forms to respond to the challenges of climate change, exploring what it means to live on an endangered planet. Written at the height of his powers, Into the Hush is a landmark publication. Sze enacts a thrilling journey from silence into sound, from emptiness into the rich panoply of existence.
- GenresPoetryAsian American
88 pages, Hardcover
Published April 1, 2025
About the author
Arthur Sze
36 books81 followersArthur Sze (b. 1950 New York City) is a second-generation Chinese American poet.
Sze was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of eight books of poetry. His own poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, Manoa, The Paris Review, Field, The New Yorker, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and have been translated into Albanian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, and Turkish.
He was a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College, and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, and Naropa University. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe.
He is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a Western States Book Award for Translation.
Sze was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of eight books of poetry. His own poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, Manoa, The Paris Review, Field, The New Yorker, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and have been translated into Albanian, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, and Turkish.
He was a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College, and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, and Naropa University. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe.
He is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a Western States Book Award for Translation.
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December 8, 2025This is Arthur Sze's 12th book of poetry, but he only came onto my radar this year when he became the new US Poet Laureate. Penguin Press sent me this as an ARC and I've been quietly making my way through it, more parts baffled than awed. This collection is a blur of oscillating images, mostly natural and pastoral, but also scientific, which all seem to be reaching and grasping out for something that never quite made itself known to me. I was 'inhal[ing] starlight', sensing its beauty, but finding it in an unknown language. Sometimes this is tiresome. It is hard work, and dare I say, it does not pay off, at least not in my case. Singular images lingered, but were soon dissolved by the next, as abstract and distracting as the first; Sze's language kept them in a constant state of flux, appearing then vanishing, before I could claim (or accept) either state entirely. For seasoned contemporary poetry readers, I am sure it will be a treat.
February 3, 2025
I really appreciate Sze’s ability to handle Big Topics such as the literal universe, humanities place in a nuclear age, all of earths nature, with grace and focus. The “i” expands to the cosmos and the cosmos are within reach.
May 14, 2025
Arthur Sze has quietly put together one of the most significant bodies of work in contemporary poetry. Quiet, as the title suggests, is a keyword and a spiritual practice. Like Gary Snyder and A.R.Ammons, Sze attends with infinite care to the details of the natural world, intensely aware of, but no despairing over, the crisis/disater we're facing. His perspective spans the globe but remains grounded in the specifics of his place and moment. The thread of calligraphy--the brushwork creating the character for emptiness (if I have it right1)--that unites the book works beautifully as an epic zen koan.
A quick sample:
shadows of flames. wash across our bodies--
sall circles, large circles, circumference is everywhere
Every poem offers rewards, but I checked these as special favorites: "Jaguar Song," "Into the Hush," "Swimming Laps," "Wildfire Season." A second selection: "Anvil," "Among Spruce," "Farolitos," "Downwind," "Oxbow Lakes," "Morning Mist," "Architectures of Emptiness."
A quick sample:
shadows of flames. wash across our bodies--
sall circles, large circles, circumference is everywhere
Every poem offers rewards, but I checked these as special favorites: "Jaguar Song," "Into the Hush," "Swimming Laps," "Wildfire Season." A second selection: "Anvil," "Among Spruce," "Farolitos," "Downwind," "Oxbow Lakes," "Morning Mist," "Architectures of Emptiness."
January 7, 2026
I feel a little bad for rating so low what are clearly very competent and polished poems. But I really did not like this book, and, honestly, reading it made me mad.
June 21, 2026
I picked up the latest book from our latest Poet Laureate of the United States alongside four other books of, about, or containing poetry (by Refaat Alareer, Tracy K. Smith, Amanda G. Elsbury, as well as the collection The People’s Project) at the public library in early April in celebration of National Poetry Month. In between, I also read Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Against Breaking by Ada Limón during a trip to my college town of Bloomington, Indiana. Not that any explanations are required, but all of this—including the fact that I read Gay’s and Limón’s books twice, as well as this one—is why I come to be reviewing Into the Hush in the third week of June, with National Poetry Month long since faded into the rearview mirror.
I was not familiar with Sze before being named the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate, but the library was, or at least familiar enough to have his previous collection of poems, 2021’s The Glass Constellation, also on the shelves. He is our first Asian-American Poet Laureate, and, I figured, given his age (75), he might be one of the oldest to serve, but not so. There have been eight older than Sze, including Stanley Kunitz, who was 95 when he served. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were appointed Poet Laureate of anything, least of all of the United States, but if I set those fears aside, at the relatively spritely age of 53, there is time for me yet!
From Erika Blumenfeld’s bioluminescence photograph that graces the cover (about which she says of the project on her website, “It is remarkable the poetry of how a nearly microscopic creature of such import to the health of Earth’s oceans and biosphere and which is so at risk from our civilization’s impact, could yet show us how to illuminate the dark.”) to the spacious margins and ample leading, the book’s design is a wonderful extension of Sze’s poetry, setting the reader up for something mysterious, unexpected, startling, and, one hopes, quiet, too.
Into the Hush is all of those things, and while I loved the powerful imagery, jarring contrasts, and Kawabataesque simplicity that seemed to undergird everything, the poems themselves—or perhaps it was the collection as a whole—often stirred nothing in me emotionally. That’s why I read the book a second time. Was it him? Is it me? (It very well might be me.) Sze has a keen eye for noticing and a proclivity for making connections where there would otherwise seem to be randomness, but the observations felt profound because of the attempt at synchronicity, not because connecting the random observations into synchronicity was patently profound.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs here. After all, anyone who looks at a piece of modern art and says, “I could do that,” is missing the point. The point isn’t whether anyone could do it; the point is that someone did when no one had before. I respect Sze as a craftsman and as a technician, and I don’t think we’re quite done with each other yet—The Glass Constellation is only an online checkout and 10 minutes away. In the end, there was much to admire in Into the Hush, but also, sadly, much that left me indifferent.
I was not familiar with Sze before being named the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate, but the library was, or at least familiar enough to have his previous collection of poems, 2021’s The Glass Constellation, also on the shelves. He is our first Asian-American Poet Laureate, and, I figured, given his age (75), he might be one of the oldest to serve, but not so. There have been eight older than Sze, including Stanley Kunitz, who was 95 when he served. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were appointed Poet Laureate of anything, least of all of the United States, but if I set those fears aside, at the relatively spritely age of 53, there is time for me yet!
From Erika Blumenfeld’s bioluminescence photograph that graces the cover (about which she says of the project on her website, “It is remarkable the poetry of how a nearly microscopic creature of such import to the health of Earth’s oceans and biosphere and which is so at risk from our civilization’s impact, could yet show us how to illuminate the dark.”) to the spacious margins and ample leading, the book’s design is a wonderful extension of Sze’s poetry, setting the reader up for something mysterious, unexpected, startling, and, one hopes, quiet, too.
Into the Hush is all of those things, and while I loved the powerful imagery, jarring contrasts, and Kawabataesque simplicity that seemed to undergird everything, the poems themselves—or perhaps it was the collection as a whole—often stirred nothing in me emotionally. That’s why I read the book a second time. Was it him? Is it me? (It very well might be me.) Sze has a keen eye for noticing and a proclivity for making connections where there would otherwise seem to be randomness, but the observations felt profound because of the attempt at synchronicity, not because connecting the random observations into synchronicity was patently profound.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs here. After all, anyone who looks at a piece of modern art and says, “I could do that,” is missing the point. The point isn’t whether anyone could do it; the point is that someone did when no one had before. I respect Sze as a craftsman and as a technician, and I don’t think we’re quite done with each other yet—The Glass Constellation is only an online checkout and 10 minutes away. In the end, there was much to admire in Into the Hush, but also, sadly, much that left me indifferent.
December 7, 2025
This was tedious.
January 12, 2026
Found one of my new favorite poems!
“Tiger swallowtails hover over Russian sage—
I smell eucalyptus where there is no
eucalyptus and locate summer in rain.
Like bats emerging out of a cave at dusk,
a thread of grief unfurls in the sky.
Neither you nor I can stop the planting
of mines in a field or the next detonation.
I unclog a drip line along a fence;
in May, lilacs arced over the road in a cascade
of purple blossoms. Now, stilled in a minute
of darkness, I listen to bamboo leaves
unfurl above into sunshine. Untangling
a necklace composed of interlocking
gold chains, then lifting it, I trace
joy, fear, bewilderment, bliss, a this
resplendent in my fingertips. I slip inside
a strawberry runner that extends root, leaf,
then stand in morning starlight and inhabit a song.”
-Midsummer, “Forage”
While the rest of the pieces were pleasant, I didn’t resonate deeply with most of them, so the collection gets a 3/5.
“Tiger swallowtails hover over Russian sage—
I smell eucalyptus where there is no
eucalyptus and locate summer in rain.
Like bats emerging out of a cave at dusk,
a thread of grief unfurls in the sky.
Neither you nor I can stop the planting
of mines in a field or the next detonation.
I unclog a drip line along a fence;
in May, lilacs arced over the road in a cascade
of purple blossoms. Now, stilled in a minute
of darkness, I listen to bamboo leaves
unfurl above into sunshine. Untangling
a necklace composed of interlocking
gold chains, then lifting it, I trace
joy, fear, bewilderment, bliss, a this
resplendent in my fingertips. I slip inside
a strawberry runner that extends root, leaf,
then stand in morning starlight and inhabit a song.”
-Midsummer, “Forage”
While the rest of the pieces were pleasant, I didn’t resonate deeply with most of them, so the collection gets a 3/5.
January 20, 2026
1.5 stars
This collection felt like pulling teeth. Arthur Sze is a great poet when it comes to style and structure, but his poetry is not for me. Glad he is the current Poet Laureate, but I don't think I will be picking up any of his other collections anytime in the near future. My review is short because I got most of my opinions out at book club. Interesting collection to discuss.
This collection felt like pulling teeth. Arthur Sze is a great poet when it comes to style and structure, but his poetry is not for me. Glad he is the current Poet Laureate, but I don't think I will be picking up any of his other collections anytime in the near future. My review is short because I got most of my opinions out at book club. Interesting collection to discuss.
December 25, 2025
I don’t remember Arthur Sze writing pantoums in the past, which is bizarre since his entire output of poetry often feels like a galaxy-sized pantoum. Great as always!
August 1, 2026
Reading a volume of poetry at any pace other than leisurely is not an easy task. A poem requires something of the reader: the right mood, the appropriate amount of attention, some appreciation of the form, and more.
This was an impulse read from the library’s “new” stacks, and I worked my way through it over the past week. There are a lot of themes and modes that just didn’t make the cut for me, but then again there were some beautiful phrases too. “… all those letters amass like a glowing white Pyramid of Giza in the night desert behind your eyes—“
Sze makes use of the em dash a lot. Is that his style? I know nothing about him, but from these poems I’d surmise he’s intimately familiar with the American southwest and Mexico and Native American cultures.
It’s a nice break from my normal reading habits. My last volume of poems read all at once was probably an Eliot collection waaaaaay back in university. But alas, the mood wasn’t quite right and I merely appreciated the work.
This was an impulse read from the library’s “new” stacks, and I worked my way through it over the past week. There are a lot of themes and modes that just didn’t make the cut for me, but then again there were some beautiful phrases too. “… all those letters amass like a glowing white Pyramid of Giza in the night desert behind your eyes—“
Sze makes use of the em dash a lot. Is that his style? I know nothing about him, but from these poems I’d surmise he’s intimately familiar with the American southwest and Mexico and Native American cultures.
It’s a nice break from my normal reading habits. My last volume of poems read all at once was probably an Eliot collection waaaaaay back in university. But alas, the mood wasn’t quite right and I merely appreciated the work.
February 11, 2026
I read this collection because I heard the poet in an interview and was intrigued. I was not disappointed. With various poetic forms included, these powerful poems bring to mind our place in the natural world as well as what we and other creatures are losing--languages, habitat, and more. Much wildlife is included in these poems, particularly birds. My favorite poem in the collection was Jaguar Song, but I also quite liked Eraser Song. The poems are set in many locations, from India to the Arctic and many places in between. This is a wonderful assortment of poems and this book would be great to have nearby, opened at random, and a poem enjoyed when there are a few free minutes available. Highly recommend.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the poet for a digital review copy.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the poet for a digital review copy.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Arthur Sze has already published eleven collections of poetry; Into the Hush is his twelfth, and it is sobering to realise that, until now, his work had entirely passed me by.
Into the Hush has happily remedied that oversight. Here, Sze quietly reflects on the juxtaposition of nature, civilisation, and the universe.
The poems invoke thoughtful, often profound imagery, and the stillness of his reflections only underlines the power of the verse.
Admittedly, the inclusion of science in some of the poems initially threw me, but I came to deeply appreciate its presence.
I will certainly be on the hunt for more of Sze’s work on the back of this.
With thanks to Penguin for the ARC.
Into the Hush has happily remedied that oversight. Here, Sze quietly reflects on the juxtaposition of nature, civilisation, and the universe.
The poems invoke thoughtful, often profound imagery, and the stillness of his reflections only underlines the power of the verse.
Admittedly, the inclusion of science in some of the poems initially threw me, but I came to deeply appreciate its presence.
I will certainly be on the hunt for more of Sze’s work on the back of this.
With thanks to Penguin for the ARC.
March 24, 2026
“Sandhills cranes stirred, circled in the air, flew north—
deep and deeper still, into the blue mountains—“
(Spring view #9, 13)
I loved this collection enough to read it in an afternoon!!
After stewing on this book a little more, Sze’s descriptive writing is just so compelling to me. I love his use of recurring figures - the magpie, Russian sage, the color blue - it creates an effect as if I’m experiencing the world changing around me and trying to hold onto that which is constant.
The structure of the poems is fascinating - I especially love the ones where the lines are spaced out and not grouped into stanzas. The long poems are also astonishing, with each section flowing into the next while remaining distinct.
Much to appreciate here as a nature and climate poet. Some favorites: Spring View, Jaguar Song, Scintillant, Downwind, Into the Hush, Morning Mist, Architectures of Emptiness
deep and deeper still, into the blue mountains—“
(Spring view #9, 13)
I loved this collection enough to read it in an afternoon!!
After stewing on this book a little more, Sze’s descriptive writing is just so compelling to me. I love his use of recurring figures - the magpie, Russian sage, the color blue - it creates an effect as if I’m experiencing the world changing around me and trying to hold onto that which is constant.
The structure of the poems is fascinating - I especially love the ones where the lines are spaced out and not grouped into stanzas. The long poems are also astonishing, with each section flowing into the next while remaining distinct.
Much to appreciate here as a nature and climate poet. Some favorites: Spring View, Jaguar Song, Scintillant, Downwind, Into the Hush, Morning Mist, Architectures of Emptiness
April 24, 2026
- ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) provided by NetGalley -
At times this was difficult to grasp, with some poems in the collection having a (purposely) disjointed style, highlighting the disconnect between nature and the technological advances of humanity, our place in the world, and our impact on nature.
The descriptive language was highly evocative, again showcasing the beauty of the natural world before starkly contrasting with the brutal artifice of human creation that exploits the planet we all call home.
At times this was difficult to grasp, with some poems in the collection having a (purposely) disjointed style, highlighting the disconnect between nature and the technological advances of humanity, our place in the world, and our impact on nature.
The descriptive language was highly evocative, again showcasing the beauty of the natural world before starkly contrasting with the brutal artifice of human creation that exploits the planet we all call home.
April 23, 2026
I really enjoyed my first time reading Arthur Sze. I appreciate the way he juxtaposes images — often beautiful nature images against the ugly parts of humanity — to create an in incredibly jarring effect. He is an effective poet in that he gets the reader to feel, and he is obviously someone who pays close attention to the big and small things around him. Consider me a fan!
July 6, 2026
Into the Hush may be a slim volume of poetry but it took me nearly two weeks to read. Each poem elicits such an emotional response, mostly sadness and loss, that returning to individual poems is essential. Sze's intense topics - wildfires, nature's destruction, climate change - reflect the pomposity of man.
My favorites are the nine poems that are loosely linked under the term "Forage."
My favorites are the nine poems that are loosely linked under the term "Forage."
December 6, 2025
Sze is probably writing with technical innovation, a poetic prowess, that both astounds and challenges his peers to up their game, but I wouldn't know. All I can say is I like this guy's work and find a sort of joy in his unique juxtapositions of imagery, space, time etc.
September 5, 2025
A challenge when the highlight is a random Greek City: Thessaloniki.
October 28, 2025
I enjoyed this blending of science and imagery. I can see why Arthur was picked as our 2025 Poet Laureate. I must admit there were times I did not understand the science parts.
March 29, 2026
low-key not my thing but I liked when he wrote about bombs
April 28, 2026
Nothing rhymed. It was great!. I really enjoyed these poems. Pretty words.
June 7, 2026
This collection captures beauty of the world, while never allowing to fully succumb to it. (Sze is a poet laureate so must be highly talented, I just did not enjoy reading his work.)
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews