My Poetry Corner January 2026 features the poem “Jaguar Song” from the twelfth poetry collection Into the Hush by Arthur Sze, Poet Laureate of the United States 2025-2026. He is the first Asian American to serve in this position. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection which explores humanity’s impact on Mother Nature together with glimpses of her untouched beauty.

Listen—in an Anchorage night, / a crunching resembling cars colliding, / and, as the incoming tide slaps, / you will never forget inlet ice breakup; black spruce branches are etched / against the sky; far from a city lined / with fast-food spots, bars, and pawnshops, […] you marvel at the green translucency / of leaves, the mystery of photosynthesis; / as grief and joy well up, you step / into the vernal sharpening of the day— / apricot trees are the first to bloom. (Poem “Spring View” p. 5).

Born in 1950 in New York City to Chinese immigrants, Sze is an award-winning poet with twelve books of poetry published, a translator of classical Chinese poetry, and editor. His journey to becoming a poet began in 1968 during his first semester at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was pursuing a career in the sciences. As he tells it during an interview in 2025 with Jim Natal for Marsh Hawk Press:

“I sat in a large calculus class and felt increasingly bored by the lecture. I remember flipping to the back of a spiral notebook, and I started writing phrases to a poem. I was excited at what came to me, and, before the end of class, I had a rough draft…”

To his parents’ dismay, at the end of his sophomore year in 1970, after taking an inspiring poetry workshop with Denise Levertov, he abandoned what they considered safe and professional careers: scientist, engineer, doctor, or investment banker. Though they viewed his choice of poetry as wild and risky, twenty-year-old Arthur transferred to the University of California at Berkeley where Levertov had just taught. His faculty advisor and mentor, Josephine Miles, created an individual major in poetry for him in which he studied poetry, Chinese language and literature classes, and started to translate Tang dynasty poetry in English.

In his poem “Letter to Tao Qian” (132-194), Sze writes to the Chinese government official and warlord of the Han dynasty (p. 42):

I wish to tell you but lose the words— / more than a millennium later, / on another continent, in another language, / I know adversity strengthened you. // Today we possess antibiotics, / cars, cell phones; scientists / use infrared scanners, check a wildfire / that has charred 341,735 acres. […] Today we have no spell // that lessens loss; a neighbor’s backhoe / beeps as it excavates a slope. / Sifting your words, I dig at this site / where pines scent after rain;…

When he graduated from UC Berkeley, the adventurous young poet wanted to go somewhere he had never been before. Following the suggestion of his mentor, he hitchhiked to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with only a backpack, his curiosity, and the name of her friend. With the friend’s suggestion, he applied and was accepted to the New Mexico Poetry-in-the-Schools program. For the next ten years (1973-1983) he worked all over the state: on Native American reservations, in Spanish-speaking communities, with incarcerated juvenile offenders, at the School for the Deaf, and in the Penitentiary.

The young poet’s immediate affinity with Native Americans led to a teaching position at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 1984, where he taught linguistics, playwriting, and English Composition. Five years later, he became the director of the creative writing program and professor emeritus of IAIA until his retirement in 2006. As director, he expanded the IAIA Associate of Arts degree into a four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts undergraduate degree program.

The wind stokes flames, / and they leap across / the fire line: to the north, // a jagged red-and-yellow / ridgeline crackles / with billowing clouds of smoke. // To the far north, a singer / stretches walrus bladder / and, completing a box drum, // starts to hum; he nods / as a song takes shape in his hands…. (Poem “Wildfire Season” p. 49)

After leaving IAIA, Sze served as Santa Fe’s first poet laureate from 2006 to 2008. His connection with New Mexico’s diverse landscape and its peoples has never waned. Today, he lives in Sante Fe with his wife and poet Carol Moldaw.

The featured poem “Jaguar Song” (p. 18) attracted my attention because the jaguar is Guyana’s national animal. As the apex predator in Guyana’s tropical rainforests, the jaguar is a symbol of majesty, mystery, and power. It also holds a prominent place in the cultures and belief systems of pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican societies who live in or near the tropical rainforests.

Sze uses the Japanese zuihitsu free flowing, prose poetic form to give voice to the jaguar. Except for opening and closing em dashes, there is no other form of punctuation. Sentences are separated by a uniform space or gap of silence, adding tension to the words between each gap. The jaguar admonishes humans, regarded as a less physically strong species, for destruction of the natural world.

—Just after you sign and envision building homes on this tract you smell me in the dark   know that I move through this terrain at night   though you only think of building and selling   even now you believe you can borrow my spirit by wearing a mask of my face on your face   look at me   delve into your fears   is your deepest fear to be hacked strangled or be strapped to an IV in a bed with no chance to die   I can grasp a turtle and break its shell with one bite   I can pounce on a deer and crush its skull and neck with my teeth   you slash and burn in the jungle   force the snakes and macaws to retreat   you even burn your own species alive   look into my eyes   I am your mirror and transformer   if you destroy my species I will shape-shift and hunt you in your dreams…

Humanity’s weapons, machines, and power structures give us a false sense of invincibility (and impunity)—until, one day, we are not.

…and now as you rummage for keys at your apartment doorstep I am a passing jogger about to pounce   I am the creature who smells your darkest thoughts   and as you turn the key in the lock day or night out of the darkness I spring—

To read the complete featured poem “Jaguar Song” and learn more about the work of Asian American Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, go to my Poetry Corner January 2026.