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Dazzled
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
About the author
Arthur Sze
38 books82 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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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 16, 2026
I found an original, signed copy of Dazzled in the library bookstore -- an incredible, lucky discovery.
This book delivers on its title. Each poem has lingered in my mind, and feels so incredibly current, timeless, it's hard to believe it came out in 1982 (40+ years ago!)
I like the quite spaces Sze enters -- construction sites, ancient New Mexico landmarks, a doctor's office. He examines fire, frost, leaves. He make me want to dig deeper and more meaningfully into my own observations of the world.
It's hard to pick favorites, but I'll try... "The Weather Shifts" is a gorgeous poem about unemployment, the between spaces the mind enters in those periods.
The imagery in "Empty Words" -- second stanza -- might be my favorite of the collection:
"My mind is like a tumbleweed rolling
in the wind, smashing against the windshield of cars,
but rolling, rolling until nothing is left.
I sit in the sunlight, eyes closed:
empty mind, empty hands. I am a
great-horned owl hunting in a night with no moon."
There's the wild monkey-mind of thought here ("tumbleweed rolling"), tamed by the meditative impulse to sit and clear one's mind, to focus in.
This book is worth reading over many times... and sharing with others.
This book delivers on its title. Each poem has lingered in my mind, and feels so incredibly current, timeless, it's hard to believe it came out in 1982 (40+ years ago!)
I like the quite spaces Sze enters -- construction sites, ancient New Mexico landmarks, a doctor's office. He examines fire, frost, leaves. He make me want to dig deeper and more meaningfully into my own observations of the world.
It's hard to pick favorites, but I'll try... "The Weather Shifts" is a gorgeous poem about unemployment, the between spaces the mind enters in those periods.
The imagery in "Empty Words" -- second stanza -- might be my favorite of the collection:
"My mind is like a tumbleweed rolling
in the wind, smashing against the windshield of cars,
but rolling, rolling until nothing is left.
I sit in the sunlight, eyes closed:
empty mind, empty hands. I am a
great-horned owl hunting in a night with no moon."
There's the wild monkey-mind of thought here ("tumbleweed rolling"), tamed by the meditative impulse to sit and clear one's mind, to focus in.
This book is worth reading over many times... and sharing with others.
Displaying 1 of 1 review