"Arch of Enjoyment"

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Ted Landrum

Among the golden rules of poetry, two are about to be broken, or at least bent. One demands brevity, the other shuns explanation. Nevertheless, I shall risk introducing a long poem, with a tedious explanation:

"Arch of Enjoyment" is one in a series of experimental "archi-poems" bending not only rules and ears but (possibly) discourses. How? By attempting to open heuristic thresholds where the poetry of architecture and the architecture of poetry meet in a mutually enabling encounter.¹ This is an encounter which, in spite of involving considerable eccentricities, and embracing contradictions, I associate (from beginning to end) with a middle way. By intimately engaging with foundational texts, and transforming them through dialogical inquiry, these "midway radicals" (as I also call them) strive both to find and to create—or rather, to invite—synthetic re-understandings constitutive of a (simultaneously) common and uncommon ground.² If so, these re-understandings take place: midway between poetry and architecture, poetry and prose, making and re-making, reading and writing, and (perhaps most importantly) between readers and writers.

This project has developed from a working hypothesis: that it is not possible to adequately communicate what matters most concerning architecture (especially architectural qualities) in straight prose; rather, for this (and similar challenges) we require poetry, and all that it allows. In truth, such distinctions are rarely so simple. All prose involves poetry, since language is inherently metaphorical, multi-vocal and polysemic, richly layered with ambiguities and contradictions, and always subject to interpretative tensions and potential aporias resolvable only by imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief. Inversely, as Dante argued in the Banquet, all poetry builds upon the underlying agency of prose—common literal, or effectively transparent, language. In other words, as in any room with a view, lucidity comes from a combination of direct and indirect illumination, but the contents of the room gain their nuanced depth through latent obscurities, shades and shadows, which illumination, however bright, will never fully erase.

The following poem, a found-erasure poem, takes as its source the middle chapter of Henri Lefebvre's Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment,³ and proceeds, chiaroscuro-like, to blacken out all but a few suggestive details found by reading, by sampling, or by weaving if you will, a middle path down the page. Thus, the resulting poem may be read as a (second) translation, one that is both a poetic intensification, and an unfinished renovation of its prose source. I say "unfinished" because, by design, archi-poetry requires creative participation of the reader.

1. On architecture and poetry, see Alberto Perez-Gomez' Built Upon Love (MIT Press, 2006); and Jill Stoner's Poems for Architects (William Stout, 2001).
2. I borrow the phrase from David Leatherbarrow's Uncommon Ground (MIT Press, 1999).
3. Henri Lefebvre, "Chapter 11, Architecture" in Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, trans. by Robert Bononno (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

"Arch of Enjoyment"
now gave way to larger need now to ur if space of enjoyment it will not sever roughly from matters we have taken carefully filtered by fun to function in line with line we find a city within words pleasant almost where the social oval invented the geo option the re artly co slam example the ear ur rounded by the vast park intended to archi a succession of rooms hallway and vestibule half an acre pools together paraphernalia for word rooms each the caldarium ear to be stadium or we say a mosaic fountain painting with din a room art park where meet and talk a public we made making us offer enjoyment yes perhaps paces about them they were in a sense the place prepared itself for sensual text may already co in this they themselves approach ero architecture polymorpho valent art here is an art ur re built under the centuries these were collective works poets human sculptors who were familiar with meanings and scenes play a primal architecture by the act of love together with all the refinements diaphanous movement of the world music times' matron sometimes the mistress of dizzying images responded with omni standing us in the hand of space seated on sleep is it not an example of an art archi where a space of sensuality should be looking for it present tended in contact acts in a setting carved into the sensual profusion disappear beneath that pleasure animals joy and love the path to through it was able to make beings re ecstasy an ecstasy the flesh but an absolute art	silent about this beautiful more or less us ecstasy on their faces cosmic as a sphere forms make love with the same joy work the here space is limited by the body of the other text merely to impart this truth the city architecture serves situated within occupies that text we re posit its owner built texture an archi archi directed toward a swell typo between urban and rural archi ification does get us susceptible existence either it results from building influence or over a slender margin blished to span according to a pre and so on architecture plays by being urb ject to a sting plan spontaneous it is this that makes the distant near appear its influence takes place here to abolish all forms of the former re dominant force of the city in uniform success require diversity double a city in the city often inspired by myth topia building an entire city utopia as cosmological consideration into the urban core domination being transposed in ink as more city is read in spatial practice pace of habit multi fun by others in search can speak an archi enjoyment ready based on a vague fun these archi considerations lead us to the city as an archi wish to will revolutionary arts forgotten in the construct constructed for you that will be offered part of you will be able to erase scribes over inkers dancing a building of here art we ask dance more from the arch house of pleasure a gentle shore excited the artery the flash of charming archi ably began to build philosophy sensate world for a graduated flame	loud we are not far here from the similar building a pleasure for the work of passions into the record of question discoveries to the depths of connection between does not in any way resemble one of our buildings establish a great experiment only or a pal some difficult society must differ vastly families having verse gain ground archi ification peri ification the multi mordial external internal synth alog places the other world starting from the point of archi marked by actical fun internal on the other laws of fun archi ification would be the surprising laden with space of enjoyment enjoyment not entirely convincing ledge space of the pan yet responding to between clearly different taken to be the analog can differ and yet correspond an upright stone part whole designates the analog partially apparently similar logy with metaphor stood as archi we discover magic the wide range of contact communicates contiguity syntagmatically by contra mime paradigm and mediation was a time to heal touching magic by contact with analogy participating in life or play toward the world recounts a different drama toward the sting operating within archi mime umph pending enables the archi base is co ur alog do i din