Ours

Cole Swensen is the author of eleven previous books of poetry. She is also a translator and has won the PEN USA Award in Literary Translation. Her poetry has won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and she teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

"Engaging and delightful." Publishers Weekly "Highly recommended for contemporary poetry collections." -- Karla Huston, Appleton Art Ctr., WI Library Journal "The best landscape architecture book of the year is a book-length poem." -- Norman Weinstein Archnewsnow.com "The unrelenting lens Swensen turns on the [gardens] allows us to glimpse some of the myriad layers that constitute history." -- Mary Jo Bang Harvard Review

• Acknowledgments Introduction HISTORY A Garden Is a Start Paradise Leaving the Middle Ages The Birth of Landscape Architecture The Garden as Architecture Itself The Garden as Extension Sir Mine Gardens Belong PRINCIPLES In an Effort to Make the Garden a Standing Proof Certain Principles Must Be Observed A Garden Occurs in Four Stages A Garden as a Letter A Garden as Between A Garden as a Unit of Measure Anamorphosis Euclid's Eighth Theorem Because a Garden Must End VAUX-LE-VICOMTE If a Garden of Numbers Further Notes on the Collusion of Time and Space Working Conditions Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) Water Labyrinths and Mazes OTHER GARDENS Saint-Germain-en-Laye Chantilly Saint-Cloud Meudon THE MEDICIS Catherine (1519-1589) Marie (1573-1642) The Luxembourg Gardens VERSAILLES Versailles the Unfurled The Divinity of the Sun King The Garden as a Map of Louis XIV Le Notre's Drawings And the Birds, Too The Ghost of Much Later STATUARY ORANGERIES "YOU ARE A HAPPY MAN, LE NOTRE" On Happiness Psychic Botany The Gardened Heart Tuileries, January 2007 Keeping Track of Distance