Lines No Fire Could Burn

by HEJDUK, JOHN

• ISBN13: 9781580930383
• ISBN10: 1580930387
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-04-01
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press

Summary

Architect and educator John Hejduk has devoted his life work to creating worlds, not only in his analytic architecture but in his mission to change the structure of architectural education. Hejduk has always accompanied all facets of his work with a haunting poetic narrative. He conceives for his projects a literary counterpoint or dramatic verbal discourse. In his books, he weaves together text and textured drawings, and he has conceived of his works as a cinematic repertory group of structures. The seventy-three poems inLinesare a construction by an architect who seeks out the complex relationships of mother and son, of angels and their mysterious flights, of mental landscapes on the earth and in the sea; it is an entire book of idiosyncratic prayer, sustaining an almost unbearable tone of directness and suffering. These powerful religious poems offer strange combinations, where Jesus, Rodin, and Braque may coexist. Hejduk details the agony of consciousness itself in wild and concentrated stanzas, offering a kind of major mass for those who understand and have the power to voice affliction and the drive to transcend it in sacred music, bringing forth a new understanding of what it means to be human within the earthly substance and the celestial air. This book of courage and despair crowns Hejduk's life work.

Author Biography

John Hejduk, architect, teacher, and poet, was the dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. Among his many books are Adjusting Foundations; Education of an Architect: A Point of View; Education of an Architect: Volume 2; Pewter Wings, Golden Horns, Stone Veils; and the trilogy Mask of Medusa, Vladivostok, and Soundings.

Table of Contents

Christ in Prague	p. 13
To Absorb The Sins of Man	p. 14
Will There Be Blood	p. 15
Dig Into the Earth	p. 16
Odor of His Havoc	p. 17
The Weights of Hearts	p. 18
Not Yet a Warning	p. 20
Hells Angel Burns	p. 21
Magnificent Night Angel	p. 22
All This Before Me	p. 23
The Returning Angel	p. 24
I Bring to Others	p. 25
Filled With Flame	p. 27
A Shadow Fell	p. 28
First Line of Dawn	p. 29
A Metal Flower	p. 30
Night Garden	p. 31
The Last Supper	p. 32
The Unearthly Weight	p. 34
A Landscape	p. 35
Cut in the Soil	p. 36
Within	p. 38
Inside of me	p. 39
The Deposition	p. 40
Permanent Remembrance	p. 42
The Body and Wounds	p. 44
His Elongated Body	p. 45
The Darkness	p. 47
Her Death	p. 48
The Undertow of Thought	p. 49
Sounds of Creation	p. 53
In its Silence	p. 55
Ocean Liquids	p. 56
Who Will Believe in Me	p. 57
Passage	p. 59
In His Fathers House	p. 60
Rain of Petals	p. 61
The Green Room	p. 63
The Panthers Silence	p. 65
A Blue Rose	p. 67
The Lake	p. 69
The Wallpaper	p. 71
Glaciers in The Sun	p. 72
No fire Could Burn	p. 74
Then an Explosion	p. 75
In Unmoving Blood Stilled	p. 76
I Will Build it of Stone	p. 78
Holding Them Close	p. 80
To Fresh Cold	p. 82
In Natures Fields	p. 83
His Shadow Cuts	p. 85
Was There Time	p. 86
This Day to Mourn	p. 87
Leaving the Eyes Open	p. 88
Interior Stones in the Night	p. 90
Resplendent Glory	p. 92
Your Contemplative Sadness	p. 93
And to Solitude	p. 95
Casketed Bones	p. 96
Let Us Return	p. 98
Sound of the Sea	p. 100
A Church Spire Rose	p. 102
The Sweet Juice Bled	p. 103
Of Shades and Shadows	p. 105
It Hardly Flowed	p. 107
Your Anguish Burning	p. 108
In Time Over Long Time	p. 110
His Soul was Dancing	p. 112
And What Are They	p. 114
The Cliffs of Le Harve	p. 116
In The Spring	p. 118
The Air Became Cold	p. 119
Pure Blue was Saved	p. 120
Death of the Virgin	p. 121
The Funeral of Jan Palach	p. 123
Illustrations	p. 127
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