City slickers like to pretend they’re too hard-boiled for things like poetry, but stanza is Italian for room, and in fact nothing complements apartment living like poetry’s sharp lines, quick turns, hard-won grace, and carefully preserved pockets of empty space.
From Walt Whitman’s urban sprawl to Eileen Myles’ skinny tenements, poems give an expansive skyline back to those of us who spend too much time in subway tunnels and downtown canyons.
At the intersection of poetry and architecture is the exhibit “Walking, Poems & Buildings,” which opens this week at Poets House (72 Spring St., 2nd floor) and includes collaboratively produced poems and architectural models of a bus shelter and a “writer’s hut.”
This season, the hottest, slimmest gift isn’t a plasma television—it’s a volume of poetry. What’s on your shelf? (Thanks, Patricia!) SGH
May I shamelessly plug my sister's book of poetry? "Forbidden City" by Peggy Hamilton, available at Amazon.com, or http(colon)//ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu
Hi,
I'm a recent fan of your blog, and especially appreciate your love of books.
I'm a poet too, and I would have loved to have applied for Poet Laureate! Are you going to select a different one each year?
I think you might mean "the apartments of the writing world."
The Art of Peace, by Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido ("harmony energy way"). i guess it doesn't really count as poetry. but i read it like poetry.