Model City

by Donna Stonecipher

Model City answers its own inaugural question ‘What was it like?’ in 288 different ways. The accumulation of these answers offers a form of sustained and refined negative capability, which by turns is wry, profound and abundant with an unspecified longing for the passing ghost of European idealism. In the various enquiries and explorations of Model City this is also the mapping of a lived condition and its relationships not readily found on every street corner – nor in the broken ideologies from the populist bargain basement proffered by our political cadres. What becomes apparent is that the model city/Model City exists by virtue of a poet’s wit and inventiveness, in its accomplished and elegantly measured language. Stonecipher’s mesmerizing, epigrammatic fables establish the off-centre polis where, oddly, we find ourselves at home. — Kelvin Corcoran

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books I keep returning to again and again. At this point, I've stopped dog-earing the corners of the pages since nearly every page is turned down. The depth of Stonecipher's perception, the clarity of her vision, the patience with which she moves through the world and explains it; her ability to turn an idea over and over until you've seen every side of it; her sheer generosity as a citizen of the world and a guide to it for her readers -- all of these things and more are why my admiration for Stonecipher's work only grows larger with new collection she puts out. She is, in my opinion, among the best poets writing today. This book, like her previous collections, sustain multiple (re)readings and show her to be a poet of real value -- a poet whose work not only gives more with each re-reading, but who leaves her reader with a sense of the world that is both larger, and more generous, and more interesting than it was before.

[Bouquiniste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zaujímavá konceptuálna zbierka na pomedzí poézie, filozofie architektúry a urbánnej sociológie, v slovenčine trochu otravná tou anaforou "bolo to ako...", syntakticky občas pôsobiacou neohrabane, inak však ponúkajúca viaceré odstavce, ku ktorým sa budem rada vracať.
Okrem urbánno filozofického rozmeru je totiž kniha aj subtílnym denníkom cudzinky, flâneurky, ktorá sa pred čitateľmi skrýva za myšlienky, za druhú osobu jednotného čísla, a len v náznakoch ponúka svoje - podľa mňa mimoriadne krehké prežívanie.

Pobavil i pobúril ma Macsovszkého Doslov, v ktorom blahosklonne a zlomyseľne (dokonca zlomyseľne podčiarkujúc, že nejde o zlomyseľnosť) poznamenáva, že Stonecipher ako Američanka nemôže precítiť dejinné otrasy mesta, o ktorom píše, a že jej anestetické písanie vyplýva aj zo života vo viacerých veľkomestách, s ktorými sa hlbšie nezrástla.
Rozmýšľam, odkiaľ Macsovszky vie, s čím sa Stonecipher zrástla alebo nezrástla a z akého dôvodu, a rozmýšľam aj, ako si vôbec môže dovoliť napísať takýto bohorovný doslov. Dovolím si poznamenať (a hovorím to bez akejkoľvek zlomyseľnosti :D), že Maczovszkého exulantský literárnovedný žargón podistým vyvstáva z toho, že je tak ďaleko od prostredia, kde jeho doslov vychádza, až prestáva vnímať jeho nemiestnosť. Ale dosť už o doslovantovi PM! Skôr mi je ľúto, že Donne Stonecipher nepripravil priestor niekto iný, niekto povolanejší a najmä vnímavejší.

[P.D. Dawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book of poetry that makes you think outside the box, and paradoxically within it too. From the macro-sphere to the microsphere would be a good description of the variety and waves with which Stonecipher demands we concentrate our minds. You can get lost in the devilishly rich and playful prose alone, but there is also much here to explore in terms of hidden meaning and the powerfully evocative nature of the language.


The ruling premise of the collection is that it asks the question 'What was it like?' in 288 different ways. All of which are very original and lucidly told, much like dreams, but also full of rich imagination and important analogies. I think answering this question 'What was it like?' repeatedly through the lens of the Model City, is a great way of giving a direct comparison to our own world. Through replication on a minuscule scale, we can see our society and our world with a clearer judgement and understanding of the overall. In one of the answers to this question she says how Leonardo da Vinci once wrote that 'small rooms strengthen minds, while large rooms weaken them.' Perhaps this is one of the greatest takeaways from the book, the fact that she is saying if we reimagine the world and look upon it as if it were a model city, maybe then we could understand the world, or at the very least concentrate some of its truths much better at this smaller scale. So in a way, Stonecipher is asking us to see the world as if we were a giant looking over it, perhaps even god-like in our ways, and asking us that we find wisdom and empathy there.


This book is a gift to the imagination and certainly a collection of poetry that I look forward to revisiting. I'm sure I also won't resist the urge to occasionally delve into its delights at random in the near future as I glance at it on my bookshelf. The book is also larger in page-width than your average poetry collection, which I felt lent itself very well, and presumably intentionally, to match the space needed for the prose-like structured poems within, thereby furthering enhancing the importance of spatial necessity and its fluid relationship with vacancy. As an endnote, I would also like to thank Frank Skinner, as it was thanks to his poetry podcast that the wonders of this great book of poetry was made known to me.

[Anemoian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've met Donna in person and I'm currently trying to translate the book into Armenian. it's absolutely amazing.

[Phillip Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Some great individual moments, though I felt the point a bit laboured in length of the collection.

[Peter B Waddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the format of this book (and The Cosmopolitan) with its poetic building blocks that slow the reading for the sake of savouring and meditation. The internal stitches of thread that link, embroider and suggest connections are often beautiful and support many of the koan-like philosophical nudges, though the pleasure wanes a bit when they come to be expected, certain twists feeling a little familiar within the repetitive style. But the pleasure of single lines is rich relish, sufficient.

[Jason Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stayed up past my bedtime because I couldn't stop reading this exquisite book of poetry. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that reading it took me into a variety of different worlds and I didn't want to leave.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stonecipher is becoming one of my favorite poets. A book born out of obsession. It's a wonder to jump inside.

[Stephen Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this after hearing about it on Frank Skinners poetry podcast. Very good. Some interesting ideas and themes. Worth coming back to re read.

[Konstantin R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

[rating = B]
This is the second book of poetry I've read by Donna Stonecipher. One of my friends' literature classes was reading excerpts and they intrigued me enough to get a copy. Each poem is four stanzas of three lines each, written in a prose-poem style. Each stanza in a poem (72 total) builds off the first, taking images and themes established and furthering them. I really thought this style was unique, minimalist-ly interesting, and effective. Unfortunately, it went on for sometime. Because it was rather long, it took on many themes or motifs without securely investigating all of them. Unlike her previous collection, this dealt with ideas more than language (as in, there were less noteworthy phrases/lines to be wowed by). Stonecipher discusses the "ideal" city, the model city that will be humanity's great creation...supposedly. So talks of vacancies (in conjunction to Hotels, empty space waiting for impermanent occupancy), and of social contracts, and of the mystique of the singular. This is a good collection, but it does wear on the patience sometimes, arriving at: "why should there be any vacancy in the fully realized ideal?"

[Mark Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elusive and slippery. There are 4 epigrams on each of the 71 pages. The numbering goes up to 72, but there is no 36.
Overall it wonders at these conglomerations we call cities, and how they can feel alien, and how they are designed to be liveable. There are regular references to hotels. I think the author is interested in hotels as examples of impermanent occupation. This stands as a metaphor for the various guises cities go through, and that cities are more changeable in their populations.

One example is the page headed 50. The 4th epigram reads ‘It was like straightening up your borrowed skeleton while entering the exoskeleton of the building, knowing that you are only a regime moving into the abandoned homes of previous regimes’

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

What was it like?

It was like going for a walk in the model city, walking up the middle of the road. Not on either footpath but the centre. Taking in the view from each side in equal measure.

It was like walking past a shop on the the Main Street, a shop that sells only mirrors. Walking past the mirror shop’s window and seeing myself and the city around me reflected from different angles.

It was like walking through the model city with nowhere to go, taking my time and then when I got to the end of the journey all I wanted to do was turn around and go back again, seeing it all from a new perspective.

[Charles Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a simple idea, but such results. Reading each of the Model City poems, with their richness of imagination and observation, reminds me why some people make good poets, but I don't. Consider this, in Model City [46]:

It was like suddenly thinking about the emptiness in yourself: your body with its cells, your heart with its chambers.

Why had I never considered myself before as an assembly of voids, when it's so obvious in retrospect?

As an aside, there are supposed to be 72 of these poems but my edition has no [36]. It's not a missing page because otherwise [35] would be absent as well. I'd love to know if this is a deliberate omission and if so, what it means.

[Neil Saltmarsh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not giving away that there 72 sets of answers to the question, "What was it like?" The answers are very inventive, but does it warrant a book? Methinks not. Like the artificial town planning that goes to maximise hotels and industry, it left me somewhat cold. I didn't feel that this was a metaphor or answered a pressing human condition but how humans condition their environment to accommodate a political outcome. Straight to recycling. Recycling to be re-used as a Model City enwrapped in air excluding plastic.

[Richard Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning

[Miguel Foronda Álvaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stonecipher, te has pasado todos los juegos <3 <3 <3

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most unusual bit of poetry I’ve read. And one, I’ll keep going back to.

Cleverly written, wonderful observations of the urban built environment and marvellous rhythm.

It was like ..... nothing else.