poetics

Oct 30 6:22am - The poetics I've begun to observe in my wanderings around in Lawrence lately lay first in the contrast of the history left behind by the now absent industrialists and the life that has grown up in the cracks between the mill’s bricks and cement. These most obvious figures of speech are combined with the repetitive of the mills, brick upon brick on so many buildings, floor after floor of windows, iron beams, and planned street grid...

In the end, I wonder if it’s right to frame the landscapes of Lawrence as poetic metaphoric figures of speech. Should the imposing mills or large multifamily houses be personified as industrial giants looming over the little residents, unable to fight their power? Or can we instead envision them as elderly personas that need to be maintained or reborn? Should the bricks and mills be the metonymy of Lawrence? Or could we use the grass growing between the bricks, the human forged paths over tracks, or the young exuberance songs instead?

For more field notes, see this set on Flickr.