Poetry. "In AN ARCHITECTURE, Chad Sweeney reveals himself to be a Frank Gehry of language: making an overwhelming but coherent form in precise words that measure 'the violet gleam of girders,' where 'art is/the ghost between us.' The world swells with meaning before things 'smolder,' 'collapse,' 'drown.... And within the violent changes that he so precisely records, there are moments of rest and deep regard for what is passing. The poem is an elegy for the world in all its beauty and disturbing variety"--Maxine Chernoff. "Chad Sweeney's AN ARCHITECTURE, with its epigraph from Heraklitus (the philosopher of fiery flux), looks like a house that can't stand still, its 56 sections shape-shifting through spaces of meaning that are 'excavated / rather than built.' Among these magical passages, 'the nouns are verbs / the conduit between I and I.' Here, house and inhabitant (as form and content) perpetually exchange their positions, showing 'the snake / swallowing // peristalsis of / the world // by which these rooms // are constituted.' In Sweeney's swift architecture, memory assumes the power of imagination, and language becomes a platform for the mind's multiplicity: 'I speak, therefore I are.' Sweeney, as Vitruvius before him, makes architecture the sister-discipline of music"--Andrew Joron.
Author City: KALAMAZOO, MI USA
Chad Sweeney was born in Norman, Oklahoma. He is the author of PARABLE OF HIDE AND SEEK (Alice James Books, 2010), ARRANGING THE BLAZE (Anhinga Press, 2009), AN ARCHITECTURE (BlazeVOX, 2007), and A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2006). Chosen for Best American Poetry 2008 by Charles Wright, Sweeney's work has appeared in journals such as Barrow Street, Crazyhorse, NEW AMERICAN WRITING, Verse, Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain, Black Warrior Review, Passages North, RUNES, and American Letters & Commentary. He edits Parthenon West Review with David Holler, and is the editor of Days I MOVED THROUGH ORDINARY SOUNDS (City Lights, 2009), an anthology of poetry, fiction and memoir by the teaching artists of the national WritersCorps. With Mojdeh Marashi, Sweeney translated a book of Iranian poetry, Arghavaan, Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh, for which he was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA in poetry from San Francisco State University. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in literature/poetry at Western Michigan University, where he teaches creative writing and serves as assistant editor for New Issues Press. He lives in Kalamazoo with his wife, poet Jennifer Kochanek Sweeney.
Reviews and Other Links
author site
http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/an-architecture
http://galatearesurrection9.blogspot.com/2008/03/architecture-by-chad-sweeney.html