The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems

"This 500-page, career-spanning retrospective allows readers to take in the full breadth of what Sze has achieved over 10 collections. Early poems find spiritual resonance in imagery drawn from the natural world; the middle books feature various kinds of loose sequences that meditate on various subjects. My favorite poems come toward the end: columns of single lines, each ending with an em-dash, like a bank of windows that open onto the sky, inviting questions: “in a past life, I played the clarinet in a marching band – / now the vault has cracked – / have we not meandered, bewildered, in a cloud forest? – “. This book is an overwhelming feast, a treasure."