Until recently I had little experience reading poetry, certainly never writing poetry. A chance conversation ignited a spark of interest that quickly found a new mode of creative expression that I never would have guessed was within me. As I started writing, took classes in poetry, and began to get a feel for the process, I discovered the similarities in the process of creating a poem and designing a building.
A pen in my hand to get me started- whether it’s a sketch for a design idea, or lines of poetry that initiate an idea. I don’t start either with a pre-conceived notion of the final object. I layer ideas on top of each other until a resolution starts to suggest itself. Eventually an architectural design goes onto the computer, where I can get into more detail, more quickly make changes and develop the design, constantly refining until I feel it’s ready to go out for construction. Writing a poem is similar, in my notebook, I get close to where I think I have a good draft, which like an architectural design, has form and coherence. Then it goes onto the computer, where I can see how the line breaks and/ or stanzas should work, find better words to express an idea, and develop the poem until it’s ready to put out in the world.
During the writing class, having an assignment each week was, in it’s way, like having a client with a particular project. There’s a problem to solve and a springboard for creating something new.
Here are some examples of class topics, assignments, and the poems that resulted. The architectural projects I show on my website and other blog posts, are the result of many years of experience. The poems here are the work of a true novice, but I thought it would be interesting to shed a bit of insight into the creative process that I found to resonate so strongly with me.
You might observe that these poems are rooted in a sense of a place. My architectural sensibility leads me there. It’s a familiar starting point for my imagination, as my design work is, of course, always rooted in a physical place.
Concrete Imagery
“Use concrete images that appeal to any or all of the five senses… Concrete images can do two things while abstractions can only do one: a concrete image will create a physical reality in the poem that can then portray an abstract idea too, while an abstraction can only portray the idea.”
Architecture also, is composed of abstract ideas brought to physical reality.
Assignment: Write about a favorite food without mentioning the name of it.
As I worked on this assignment I found I needed to do some research. Like design projects, research is part of the process in order to give the project validity- local ordinances, climate considerations, finding the right building materials to express the design intent. For this poem, I researched the environment where cacao trees would grow, what trees and plants would be there, what birds, what the seed looks like. A fantasy landscape rooted in facts.
I also used the stanza (Italian for “room”) structure as a way to create a hierarchy to the poem. Stanzas give the poem structure and organization as you move from one thought to the next. Like moving through rooms in any building, each has it’s own unique role and guides you through the experience of the whole. In this poem, the first two stanzas offer tight “rooms” that introduce and set a stage for the third, which opens up into the main event. Frank Lloyd Wright famously takes one through a small, intimate entry space, and then opens up to the main living area where his architecture is fully expressed.
The Third Bite
The first wakens eager receptors.
They herald a saliva coated welcome
to the bitter-sweet silk cloak.
The second triggers brain memory neurons.
Synchronously, they compose a new song
of opened silver wrappers and licked sticky fingers.
The third transports me to a far-away forest,
where high in the dewy canopy, a lone blue gold
macaw screams out for a mate, while the hawk eagle
surfs currents of heat, surveying the leafy carpet
for stirring prey. On the forest floor, pine-tarred
resinous air carries the tale of decaying mahogany
leaves and caterpillar carcasses. The loamy soil
ingests their essence, feeding the passion vines’
quest for a sun-kissed bath. And there, under
an umbrella of giant banana trees, silhouetted
against the Capricorn sky, slender branches bow,
answering the tug of clustered, football shaped
fruit pods. Beneath the armored maroon skins,
citrusy sweet flesh nourishes the crunchy bitter
seeds that will be alchemized to black gold.
The Sonnet
This class focused on writing in form, specifically the Sonnet, a familiar type consisting of 14 lines with specific rhyme patterns, and typically has love as it’s theme. The sonnet creates structure for the poem and guidelines for the poet.
Contemporary poets have used and altered the form while adhering to the basic structure. One simple technique that I used in the following poem is allowing the rhyme words to not end each sentence, thoughts spill over to the next line. This helps to avoid the “sing-songy” rhythm that is so familiar in rhymed poems.
I thought about the similarity to classical architecture, familiar structural rhythms, styles, and proportions. A limited number of repeated elements coalesce into a graceful composition.
Modern interpretations may avoid the traditional style but still adhere to structural clarity and rhythm. In my own work, I don’t generally apply classical forms, but usually I am always looking for a rational structure, flow between spaces, design elements that relate to each other and to the whole. A house has basic functions that must be accommodated, and options eventually get trimmed down to what is essential and expressive.
In this sonnet, I started with a physics concept that has fascinated me for years, the Butterfly Effect, described here from Wikipedia- “In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic non-linear system can result in large differences in a later state.”
Here, I used the Shakespearean rhyme form: ababcdcdefefgg.
Butterfly Wings
flapping wings in Beijing today just might
birth a hurricane in San Juan next July.
Imagine, when I quiver at your sight,
I send lightning flashes over Oahu
and watch lithe young surfers bolt for cover.
I’ve never been to Hawaii, but I do
want to take you to Venice, discover
gilded churches and Lido sands, where ships
bearing spices from Byzantium once sailed.
At night we can stroll past gondola slips,
halos from street lamps in misted air, veiled.
We’d marvel, when I reach for your hand, at
the ripple of joy that lights up Manhattan.
Imitation
This class addressed imitation as a poetic source. Imitating another poet’s style as a way to find new inspiration, writing in the form or voice of an admired forebear. I had been reading Allen Ginsberg, and was struck by the tone, the voice, the emotion of the poem “Battleship Newsreel” from the book Reality Sandwiches. I followed his line pattern and rhythm closely, even using a few exact phrases, but with a very different subject and mood.
When I finished this, it struck me how much the process felt like taking an existing house, which I didn’t and wouldn’t have designed, and doing a complete renovation ending up with a new vision of what that house could be. These have always been rewarding project types for me, transforming an existing house into something with a new spirit and meaning for the residents. (See my post “Surgery For Your Home”.) I felt the same reward taking a work from a great poet and transforming it a personal way, and in a voice I might not have been able to create on my own.
Battleship Newsreel
Allen Ginsberg
to the stars
envisioning the kamakazis flapping and turning in the soiled
clouds
ackack burst into fire a vast hole ripped out of the bow like a
burning lily
we dumped our oilcans of nitroglycerine among the waving
octapi
dull thud and boom of thunder undersea the cough of the
tubercular machinegunner
flames in the hold among the cans of ether the roar of battleships
far away
rolling in the sea like whales surrounded by dying ants the
screams the captain mad
Suddenly a golden light came over the ocean and grew large the
radiance entered the sky
a deathly chill and heaviness entered my body I could scarce lift
my eye
and the ship grew sheathed in light like an overexposed photo-
graph fading in the brain.
Mesa Journal
after Allen Ginsberg
to the stars
envisioning the Anasazi chanting and stomping in the tear- stained
clouds.
Sparks burst out of my fire and filled the sky like
swarming fireflies,
more wood on the fire from fallen scraps of the silent
pinion,
coyote howls across the night, the sighs of the
ancestors,
flames in the pit among the ashes of smoke, the thunder of spirits
far away
wandering along the mesa surrounded by dying memories, the
tear the warrior wept.
Quietly, a silver light came over the horizon and grew whole, the
mystic cast his spell.
A radiant warmth and lightness lifted my body- I could almost
float,
and the mesa grew bathed in moonlight like an underexposed photo-
graph fading in memory.