Our National Poetry Month Series 2025 Kicks Of With “The Chance” by Arthur Sze

It’s National Poetry Month again! If you have been visiting here for a while, you know what that means—it’s our 15th annual round-up of daily doses of verse! If you are new, here’s the scoop. Every day of the month I will feature poets and their poems. I aim to be as broad and inclusive as possible in style, subject, period, gender, race, and neglected voices. 

Many years certain themes emerge either by plan or by happenstance. This year I suspect we will share voices of experience of repression of all sorts and rising resistance. The times call for the poet as the prophet, tribune, and rebel. We’ll see. I don’t want just a parade of the usual dead white men, but a lot of them did write some damn fine poetry, so they have their place here too. 

As always, selections follow my own tastes and whims. Yours may be different. But I am open to—eager for—suggestions, especially for contemporary writers. I am especially eager this year to feature resistance verse from your unique perspective.  I do not subscribe to dozens of little magazines or prowl the internet for poetry posts. I often only stumble on new and unknown poets and I am sure I miss some great stuff. Please feel free to turn me on to some. Here is a challenge—Poets, send me your own best stuff .  I don’t and can’t promise to use everything. E-mail me at pmurfin@sbcglobal.net .  

Arthur Sze, Award winning 25th U.S. Poet Laureate in 2025

The Academy of American Poets official 30th Anniversary National Poetry Month poster features Arthur Sze, Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and the 25th United States Poet Laureate for 2025–26.

With original artwork by Alfredo Richner, the poster includes the lines “even if the darkness precedes and follows / us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine” from Arthur Sze’s poem The Chance, published in The Redshifting Web: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1998). 

The Chance

• 
• 
• 
• 
•    who sells himsel a policy on his own life;

The blue-black mountains are etched
   with ice. I drive south in fading light.
   The lights of my car set out before
   me, and disappear before my very eyes.
   And as I approach thirty, the distances
   are shorter than I guess? The mind
   travels at the speed of light. But for
   how many people are the passions
   ironwood, ironwood that hardens and hardens?
   Take the ex-musician, insurance salesman,
   who sells himself a policy on his own life;
   or the magician who has himself locked
   in a chest and thrown into the sea,
   only to discover he is caught in his own chains.
   I want a passion that grows and grows.
   To feel, think, act, and be defined
   by your actions, thoughts, feelings.
   As in the bones of a hand in an X-ray,
   I want the clear white light to work
   against the fuzzy blurred edges of the darkness:
   even if the darkness precedes and follows
   us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine.

--Arthur Sze

From The Redshifting Web: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1998) by Arthur Sze. Copyright © 1998 by Arthur Sze.