Jesse Nathan: Your poems are almost always written in a present tense. On the other hand, they feel deeply haunted, a present thick with ghosts and possibilities. A river carrying the past into the future is always running under the sound of your words. What draws you to rendering things in present tense? How does poetry relate, in your view, to memory? I mean, are you—as you write in one poem—“following the thread / of recollection through a lifetime”?
Arthur Sze: I like to render things in present tense because the present is immediate and commands attention. In my early years when I was translating ancient Chinese poetry, I was struck by how Wang Wei’s poem “Deer Fence”—opening with, “Empty mountain/s, not see man”—has, with presence and absence, so much immediacy and force, and the present tense of the verb is an essential part of its power. Of course, the present is always becoming the past, so I like to use a present tense where the present is like the tip of an iceberg, where what is unseen exerts a pressure, even urgency, on what is seen.
In that regard, poetry and memory are intimately related. And memory is not something static and fixed but is something that is alive, has force, and is constantly changing. My poetry frequently relies on memory, but it is not bound by it; and it is fine if I need to adapt an actual situation or make things up, because my commitment is to the imaginative truth. In addition, when I’m writing through memory, I’m not consciously “following the thread / of recollection through a lifetime”—that would be too burdensome. Instead, I’m writing more by associational, synchronistic leaps than by linear unspooling time. In that way, I try to balance rigor and spontaneity. I need to be able to make unexpected leaps that appear disruptive or disjunctive, in the service of revealing or truing the complexity at hand.
To that end, my writing routine is flexible and not regimental. I like to start writing in the dark and write through sunrise into daylight. I work steadily, and by accretion, rather than by writing in a torrent, and I find that the physical rhythm of moving from darkness into light, where physical objects in a landscape emerge, is immensely helpful. Also, because I am not fully awake and not fully in control of my language, my writing is more spontaneous, can wander more, and this associational process helps me discover images, musical phrases, fragments that I couldn’t otherwise find.
Rather than an “eternal present,” I’m more aware of a present that is transient, and, because it is fleeting, I am frequently trying to slow time down to make a reader notice and pay attention without averting one’s gaze to what is happening. In this protracted state of slowing down time, I find that a singular image, or cluster of images, becomes a crucial vehicle in this endeavor. I want to come back to Wang Wei, where the ending to his poem is an image of sunlight shining on a piece of green moss. That image is radiant and meaningful, because it concentrates and brings into open air a moment of inner revelation.
That image also becomes a vehicle for emotion. Instead of a culminating declaration where a speaker might say, “Ah,” the elation is contained in the image and becomes the thing itself. My poems don’t go about consciously searching for revelation, but I do believe in this amazing power and efficacy of the poetic image. One image by itself isn’t sufficient to be a complete poem, but when cogently harnessed, that concentrated visual focus, that clarity and present-tense intensity, can create a radiant moment that is paradoxically transient yet enduring and profound. Then by playing with and extending recurrent images, I often discover an underlying structure to a memorable poem.
From One Question: Short Conversations with Poets by Jesse Nathan (McSweeney’s Publishing, 2026). Used with the permission of the publisher.