Photo by DD Wido on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/a-close-up-of-a-flower-4Jgp3j5ia8M

And Then Cleveland Architecture

 The Supreme Court building is “an ice box decorated 

by a mad upholsterer.” – Jill Lepore

 

When the Prospect Church merged with the Cottage Street Church,

they eventually named it Epworth-Euclid United Methodist,

but everyone calls it “The Church of the Holy Oil Can.”

 

And when a musician flew into town November 22, 1963

to solo with the Cleveland Orchestra, he landed at the airport

and took the Rapid to what he said felt eerie, “The Terminal Tower”

 

and exited smack into the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument

—not New York’s, its planned Crown of Peace left off

—not Pittsburgh’s Beaux Arts Building, largest in the world

 

to military branches—not Boston’s, which includes poets

(poets! including Poe!!)—but Cleveland’s Civil War Monument,

a box and shaft, topped with the Goddess of Liberty.

 

Recently, we have the Peter B. Lewis Building, Gehry’s foil

roll coming out of its box too fast to wrap up anything, spilling

out to the sidewalk, packaging students up into management programs.









Diane Kendig

Diane Kendig’s most recent poetry collections areWoman with a Fan: On Maria Blanchard,and Prison Terms, and she co-edited the anthologyIn the Company of Russell Atkins. Foreighteen years she directed a university creative writing program, including its prison program.  Now back home in Canton, Ohio, Kendig lives in the house her father built with his own handswhen he returned from WWII. She curates “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry,” to 7,000subscribers for the Cuyahoga County Public Library, leads workshops and residencies, andwrites poems on demand for Cleveland Free Poetry. 

dianekendig.com