Arthur Zee, one of the most acclaimed poets of our time, is celebrated for exploring the natural world,

the human condition, and connections between cultures.

A second-generation Chinese-American based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Z's work invites readers to deepen their sense of place and reflect on the world around them.

Our senior arts correspondent, Jeffrey Brown,

talked to him there about his life and work

for our arts and culture series Canvas.

When a black butterfly flits past,

when you glimpse the outlines of apple trees.

The poetry of Arthur Zee contains wonders and losses.

When bearing allute, Juma, Tuscarora join the list of vanished languages.

It's there in his latest collection, Into the Hush, in a poem titled Anvil.

The Natural World and Our Place in it, human dramas, history.

When the time of your life is a time of earthquakes.

When a woman hit by a car while crossing the street, recovers, then slides into pain,

when a Matsutaki emerges out of the rubble of Hiroshima.

I'm trying to like lay one world on top of another, on top of another.

I'm hoping to make a reader see that or experience that, that in that when, in that moment of time,

so many different things can happen.

For the young Zee, poetry happened in an unexpected way.

The child of Chinese immigrants, he was expected to go into science or medicine.

And he did make a start at MIT.

But then...

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