Poems for Architects

Jill Stoner

The best parts of this anthology are the overlays of drawings that interpret the certain poems’ structures. Being that Stoner chose the poems based on her own collection, it’s not necessarily a comprehensive look at poetry that tackles themes of space, like domesticity, urbanism, and form. But it is an interesting concept — how poetry can inﬂuence architecture.

I really like this line from Thedore Roethke’s villanelle “The Waking”: “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I was a little dubious of the usage of Futura Light as the typeface, but by the end was swayed that it’s a really good choice for the book. Usually sans-serif faces are harder to read, but the thin forms actually felt more legible than the regular weight. Her reasoning is that the typeface requires less ink and therefore “it manifests the direction in which architecture must go.”