Modern American Poetry And The Architectural Imagination

Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination: The Harmony of Forms assesses the relationship between architectural and poetic innovation in the United States across the twentieth century. Taking the work of five key poets as case studies and drawing on the work of a rich range of other writers, architects, artists, and commentators, this study proposes that by examining the sustained and productive--if hitherto overlooked--engagement between the two disciplines, we enrich our understanding of the complexity and interrelationship of both. The book begins by tracing the rise of what was conceived of as 'modern' (and often 'international style') architecture and by showing how poetry and architecture in the early decades of the century developed in dialogue, and within a shared, and often transnational, context. It then moves on to examine the material, aesthetic, and social conditions that helped shape both disciplines, offering new readings of familiar poems and bringing other pertinent resources to light. It considers the uses to which poets of the period put the insights of architecture--and vice versa. In closing, Gill turns to modern and contemporary architects' written accounts of their own practice, in memoirs and other commentaries, and examines how they have assimilated, or resisted, the practice and vision of poetry.

Others, an important and neglected little magazine, finally receives the attention it deserves in Churchill's superbly crafted study. In Churchill's discussions of Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams, among others, Others serves as a framework for reassessing the scope and significance of modernist formalism. This book is an important contribution to the fields of American poetry and poetics, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.

Poetry, Architecture, and the New York School: Something Like a Liveable Space examines the relationship between poetics and architecture in the work of the first generation New York School poets, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, and James Schuyler. Reappraising the much-debated New York School label, Mae Losasso shows how these writers constructed poetic spaces, structures, surfaces, and apertures, and sought to figure themselves and their readers in relation to these architextual sites. In doing so, Losasso reveals how the built environment shapes the poetic imagination and how, in turn, poetry alters the way we read and inhabit architectural space. Animated by archival research and architectural photographs, Poetry, Architecture, and the New York School marks a decisive interdisciplinary turn in New York School studies, and offers new frameworks for thinking about postmodern American poetry in the twenty-first century.

Edith Wharton has recently returned to prominence as a major American novelist. But few have taken her architectural work as seriously as she herself took it, or noticed its effects on her career. Two early architectural books and three travel works give sustained critical attention to the built environment. Early novels graphically portray the physical miseries of the poor and marginalized and their course in hierarchies of class and gender. By contrast, her letters consistently celebrate the tastes and manners of the elite. At its best, her fiction embodies this tension - the beauty and grace of elegant houses and public spaces, juxtaposed to their effects on those under their control. This book tracks Wharton's literary and architectural work in tandem, revealing their complex relationship. It also foregrounds the odd symmetry of her career, which began and ended in fierce attachment to traditional values, moved from delight in Italy to despair for France, and centered on the brilliantly crafted structures and spaces of the prewar novels. Annette Larson Benert is Associate Professor of English at DeSales University.

In The Emerald City, Dan Willis takes us on a flight of imagination that paradoxically never strays far from the most tangible, even intimate subjects. His essays range from the Tower of Babel to the Wizard of Oz, from Christo to Christmas trees, from the "lightness of being" to the "weight of architecture." This ultimately optimistic book suggests that architecture is as vital as ever: "It is tempting to say that our present cultural situation...has rendered architecture nearly impossible if not unnecessary. But it is also possible to look to what our lives, at the turn of the millennium, typically lack-fulfillment, spirituality, a sense of belonging, weight-and to conclude that the ground for architecture has never been more fertile. The texts-intelligent and readable-draw equally from literary sources, architectural practice, philosophical analyses, pop culture, and everyday experiences. Willis's perspective as a writer, architect, artist, and teacher informs his work; his texts are at once reflective and proactive, as they challenge readers to rethink their participation in the built environment. Accompanying the text are the author's original illustrations, which link the forms and forces surrounding architecture at the end of the twentieth century in novel, thought-provoking ways.

Boredom as an impetus for architectural theory and practice Any theorist or practitioner of architecture must confront, and even be compelled by, boredom. Called ennui, Langeweile, or acedia, boredom is a pressing concern, as the production and obsolescence of images accelerates with new technologies, leaving individuals saturated with information presented in fleeting displays that are easy to produce, easy to delete, and easy to consume. In this innovative book, Andreea Mihalache discusses the work of a quartet of well-known thinkers—designer Bernard Rudofsky, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and artist Saul Steinberg—who all recognized this form of exhaustion and shallowness as the disease of the modern world. Rudofsky found it in a deeper and more intimate engagement between the human body and its environment. Proclaiming “Less is a bore,” Venturi, and later Scott Brown, explored excess as the remedy to boredom. With detachment and irony, Steinberg mocked the homogenous architecture of the American city. Taken together, Mihalache shows, these four offer a comprehensive view of the alienated relationship of individuals with their world at three different, yet interrelated scales: the body, the building, and the urban space.