Such Places as Memory: Poems 1953-1996(Writing Architecture)

The poems of an architect whose affection for urban reality and imagined space is as evident in his writing as in his buildings and drawings.The poems of John Hejduk are almost nonpoetic- still lives of memory, sites of possessed places. They give a physical existence to the words themselves and an autobiographical dimension to the architect. Architect Peter Eisenman likens them to "secret agents in an enemy camp."Writing about Hejduk's poems in 1980, Eisenman observed, "Walter Benjamin has said that Baudelaire's writings on Paris were often more real than the experience of Paris itself. Both drawing and writing contain a compaction of themes which in their conceptual density deny reduction and exfoliation for a reality of another kind- together they reveal an essence of architecture itself." This is the first comprehensive collection of Hejduks poems to be published outside an architectural setting.

Table of Contents:
The hesitation of Orpheus, photograph of Greece or detail from Cocteau's film "Orphee"; Orpheus's memory, still from Cocteau's film "Orphee"; Diana, still from Cocteaus' film "Beauty and the Beast"; annunciation, Leonardo's annunciation painting; Bacchus, Michelangelo sculpture; Saint Anne content, Leonardo painting; Florentive Grey, Michelangelo / tombs, Medici Chapel; a dutch interior, Vermeer painting; duet, from Dutch painting; without interior, Ingres painting; to Madame D'Hausonville, Ingres painting; on a bridge, Magritte painting; Oslo room, Munch painting; the metronome, Matisse painting; France is far, Hopper painting; nature morte, Baroque painting; outside Rome, third Rome photograph; Venice (1953), Venice; Lampass Square, Court House Square, Lampass, Texas; Cefalu after Lago Negro-Waco time, Cefalu; la Roche (1972), House of Le Corbusier; Helsinki warehouses, Helsinki harbour; Oslo hotel, Oslo; Berlin looms, Berlin; a miniature volume, Emily Dickinson'stime/New England house; Arcadia, Cranbrook; PS 47 BX 1936, photograph of Bronx 1936; CU 1947, Cooper Union & El; Texas (1954), Austin; out from Lampasas to Odessa, rocking chair on porch; Cornelliana (1960), Heller House, Cornell; northern tiers, Buffalo train station; bus ride through, harlem Street; a monster slain, Uccello painting; a birth, Botticelli painting; silk of sprigs, Botticelli painting; an Umbrain passage, painting; olive trees in ochre, Duccio painting; Tuscan wheat, Uccello painting; Saint Ursula's dream, Titian painting or Giorgione painting (part contents).