Building Codes

Poetry. Belle Gironda's poems mediate between domestic and public space, using the discourse of architecture and dramas of the dispossessed. She structures each poem anew to test the tensile strength of poetic tropes. In one, you hang by a finger on Bishop's Terrace in Yosemite; in the next, you circle The Mother of Orchards (Umm Al-Basatin) in Baghdad. Gironda navigates borders, recording language's obligations to material conditions. The book's orgasms are triggered by familiar ghosts: Frank Lloyd Wright, Michel Foucault, Ruskin and Byron. But those who haunt us are lesser known folks: Shameeka Johnson-Dixon, Cat Gironda, Robert Harbison or Farley Granger. The book moves us from "Plans" to "Structures" to "Dwellers"; we end in "Occupation." Through out the journey, "pure light" marks world's edges in "quick cuts like breaking glass-> rational space." We appreciate the risks Gironda takes in cultivating empathy.