Papyrus Pantoum by Arthur Sze (Poetry Review)

under a rising moon,      we step along a ridge of white sand— “You burn me,”      torn off papyrus wrapped around a corpse;

-Arthur Sze, "Papyrus Pantoum"

I came across Arthur Sze's "Papyrus Pantoum" from a podcast episode of Poetry for All (a great discussion of the poem by Joanne Diaz and Abram Van Engen). From Arthur Sze’s 12th poetry book, Into the Hush, this poem is a pantoum. It is a form that originated from Malaysia and was later adopted into French and English poetry. The structure is grounded in repetition, composed of 4-line stanzas where the 2nd and 4th line of the stanza serve as the 1st and 3rd line of the next stanza. I had never heard of a pantoum before. But like other forms of poetry centered on repetition, it creates an undulant rhythm that is both mesmerizing and unsettling. 

This poem juxtaposes disparate images in nature, invoking violence, serenity, pain, and peace, among others. The poem begins “Coyotes surrounding a buck    staggering in the snow—”. It is an image of violence but also represents the natural order of things, the cycle of predator and prey. The next line contrasts, “under a rising moon, we step     along a ridge of white sand.” It is inviting and peaceful, and curiously, while there is tension between the disparate nature of these images, I feel that these lines also express a harmony in co-existence. 

I had read Sze’s Sight Lines about a year ago, and what I enjoyed about that collection is his ability to create vivid and evocative imagery that, when collaged with other images, invites the reader to explore and question the world created in the poem and to reflect on the world we live in. I find myself similarly tugged into the world of this poem. I am reminded of a lesson I learned in a college creative writing course, where my instructor told us that our job as writers is “to bring the news of the world” to our stories. This poem redirects our attention to slices of these moments. It reframes them with each repetition, asking us not only how and why these moments coexist but also how we perceive the constellations of these images as a function of our own perspective. 

Ultimately, I love this poem because it raises so many provocative questions. Where the blank spaces exist in each line deliberately reimagines the effect of language in creating these vivid images that, in my eyes, examine the human relationship to nature. Where do humans fit into these landscapes? How do we use language to affirm our existence and our pasts? “You burn me” are the only words in quotations within this poem. They embody a human voice that has given language to humanity’s role within the natural world—as both a perpetrator of destruction and creation but also an observer to change and growth.