Triumphal Arch

Many years ago I built a triumphal arch. At first it was just a humble creative idea, a set of neurons firing up in the right hemisphere of the brain, hovering in the arena of the mind. Later it assumed actual form on paper, rising as a two dimensional conceptual sculpture constructed out of repetitive letters in multiple acrostics. Shaped as a pattern poem, construed from periodic motifs In translational symmetry, I designed the concrete verse to look like the architecture of a stylized arch of triumph. I created it, from lines of letters, repeating characters when needed: t-s, r-s, i-s, u-s, m-s, p-s, h-s, a-s, l-s, a-s, r-s, c-s and h-s, with spaces and gaps between them. And the letters evolved into a geometrical construct of literary fractals, simultaneously typographical and visual metaphors, printed on the white paper of a colorful poetry book. But the poem was dwelling alone and aloof, hiding from the limelight and unbeknownst to the marble or granite triumphal arches erected through history to exalt violent victories, to celebrate propagandized glory in Rome and Paris, in Moscow or Pyongyang.