March 24, 2025 Issue

I’m struck by the first line of Arthur Sze’s “Mushroom Hunting at the Ski Basin,” in this week’s issue: “Driving up the ski-basin road, I spot purple asters.” Purple asters – my favorite wildflower. You don’t often see them mentioned in poems. They appear late in the fall – among the last wildflowers to bloom before winter arrives. I like the matter-of-factness of Sze’s first line. I like his use of first person-present tense. It’s a journal-like poem. There’s another line that appeals to me, too: “I step on dry topsoil but sense moisture beneath.” It’s a poem about mushroom-picking, obviously. I’m tempted to read more into it, read it as a call for awareness of our relationship with nature – our connection to the “unseen web of mycelium / connecting all roots and branches.” But no, leave it as is – a wonderful description of mushroom-hunting. 

Sze wrote another excellent New Yorker poem – “Looking Back on the Muckleshoot Reservation from Galisteo Street, Santa Fe” (May 26, 2008). It, too, features an inspired first sentence: “The bow of a Muckleshoot canoe, blessed / with eagle feather and sprig of yellow cedar, / is launched into a bay.” I love that line – so simple, yet so vivid, specific, natural. Sze is a great poet.