Features poems about gardens, particularly the 17th century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, Andre Le Notre. Using the imagery of the garden, this title considers topics ranging from human society to the formal structure of poetry. It probes the 2 senses of Le notre to discover where they intersect, overlap, or blur.
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.
"The unrelenting lens Swensen turns on the [gardens] allows us to glimpse some of the myriad layers that constitute history."
