Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination

Abstract

Abstract 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. Modern American Poetry and the Architectural Imagination 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 tandem, in dialogue, and within a shared, and often transnational, context. The book 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, the book 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.