COHERENCE FOR ONE AND ALL

Stacy Szymaszek

Arcosanti is an experimental town about an hour north of Phoenix, AZ. It was conceived by the Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri (1919–2013) and construction began in 1970. Soleri coined the term “arcology” to describe his building ethic. I best understand arcology as a response against rapacious systems that aim to make human life marginally viable — i.e. anti- capitalism.

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My partner and I spent two nights in the experimental town, which seems to be called both Arcosanti and Mayer – both abode well. The trees of columnar stature are Italian Cyprus. Those circular windows he prefers create a space away from what I realized is the essential injustice (meaninglessness, out of touch-ness) of most design – I am a circle and not a rectangle. I am not an architect but a poet obsessed with form. How am I going to get through the window?

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Soleri abided by the question “what if ?” There are no givens, only working hypotheses. By-product over product (process process process). I took dozens of pictures of the crane before learning that the crane’s only function is as a reminder that construction is ongoing. It’s a creative ideal. Soleri is best known for unbuilt projects. The term “cosanti” comes from two Italian words “Cosa” and “Anti.” Their website translates it as “before things” yet I can’t and don’t want to entirely shake off the meaning of “anti” as against.

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I’ve been making my way through the anti-poems of Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s (1914-2018) (primarily as anti-translated by Liz Werner and, earlier, by Miller Williams). Anti-poetry subverts established notions of how we understand poetry. It provides new encounters, and thereby, energy, for poet and reader, versus canned ones.

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What is possible when we are direct in language and nonviolent in communication? What if we become anti-metaphor/anti-literary device? Metaphors create distance between components of an event. They separate. What if we make poems that are by-products of process and not products? Soleri cared about this kind of frugality. Art that feels good but lacks integrity can actually create underlying despair.

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Arcosanti’s vision “is to seek equitable and sustainable relationships between human activities and the Earth’s ecology.” Among Soleri’s writings, there is a section called “The Love Project.” My project-loving eyes widened. You can sense the crane in the hypothetical landscape of his thinking about love, actually more of a cosmos – the unsentimental what if. It seems the love he is talking about comes from a hunger for equity and grace. And spirit is anti-delusion achieved/released through the process (the crane) of ongoing self-awareness of our complex needs.

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