Ours: Volume 24 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780520254640)

These poems are about gardens, particularly the seventeenth-century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, André Le Nôtre. While the poems focus on such examples as Versailles, which Le Nôtre 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 nôtre" means "ours." Whereas all of Le Nôtre's gardens were designed and built for the aristocracy, today most are public parks. Swensen probes the two senses of "le nôtre" to discover where they intersect, overlap, or blur.

Author: Cole Swensen
ISBN-10: 0520254643
ISBN-13: 9780520254640
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 04/08/2008
Pages: 118
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.90h x 7.00w x 0.50d
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/17/2008 pg. 50
Library Journal 05/15/2008 pg. 106