Full Description
These poems are about gardens, particularly the seventeenth-century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, Andre Le Notre. While the poems focus on such examples as Versailles, which Le Notre created for Louis XIV, they also explore the garden as metaphor. Using the imagery of the garden, Cole Swensen considers everything from human society to the formal structure of poetry. She looks in particular at the concept of public versus private property, asking who actually owns a garden? A gentle irony accompanies the question because in French, the phrase 'le notre' means "ours". Whereas all of Le Notre's gardens were designed and built for the aristocracy, today most are public parks. Swensen probes the two senses of 'le notre' to discover where they intersect, overlap, or blur.
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction HISTORY A Garden Is a Start Paradise Leaving the Middle Ages The Birth of Landscape Architecture The Garden as Architecture Itself The Garden as Extension Sir Mine Gardens Belong PRINCIPLES In an Effort to Make the Garden a Standing Proof Certain Principles Must Be Observed A Garden Occurs in Four Stages A Garden as a Letter A Garden as Between A Garden as a Unit of Measure Anamorphosis Euclid's Eighth Theorem Because a Garden Must End VAUX-LE-VICOMTE If a Garden of Numbers Further Notes on the Collusion of Time and Space Working Conditions Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) Water Labyrinths and Mazes OTHER GARDENS Saint-Germain-en-Laye Chantilly Saint-Cloud Meudon THE MEDICIS Catherine (1519-1589) Marie (1573-1642) The Luxembourg Gardens VERSAILLES Versailles the Unfurled The Divinity of the Sun King The Garden as a Map of Louis XIV Le Notre's Drawings And the Birds, Too The Ghost of Much Later STATUARY ORANGERIES "YOU ARE A HAPPY MAN, LE NOTRE" On Happiness Psychic Botany The Gardened Heart Tuileries, January 2007 Keeping Track of Distance
