My reading with Arthur Sze yesterday was quite possibly the highlight of my year. Sadly, Carol, Arthur's wife, had to cancel at the last minute. Their 4 year old daughter, Sarah, developed a fever and she was too sick too travel so Carol decided to stay behind. The reading took place at Simmons College in a huge conference room with ceilings so high I felt lost. There were hundred of students and faculty and I was very nervous and stammered and stumbled over words. Some things never change.

To hear Arthur read his work is to revel in the beauty that is poetry. He read pieces from his collected poems, translations from The Silk Dragon and closed with a wonderful elegiac piece called "Earth Shine" for one of his colleagues at IAIA who commit suicide very suddenly. Years ago, Arthur lost another dear poet friend, I think his name was Gu Chung. I watch the way Arthur engages with the world, the way he answers a question from the audience, how at ease he is with the world, and in his work, and I learn so much about how I would like to engage in this world. The language of science, symbols from classical Chinese art and literature, the heart breaks open with every word.

Carol's new collection, The Lightning Field, looks really amazing too. The piece is based on a trip that she and Arthur took to Walter de la Maria's environmental installation out in Quemado, New Mexico. To visit the site, you call a # (its a DIA sponsored project) and you drive as far as Quemado. The caretakers of the installation than pick you up where you leave your car. They drive you around back and forth over remote roads to disorient you and than take you to the site, a cabin that can sleep 8 people. You are left at the site for 48 hours. No phone, no interruptions, no contact with the world. The site has several lightning poles installed and is the most interesting when lightning strikes, although on Arthur and Carol's trip, lightning only struck in the distance.