Art Deco architecture in South Beach, Florida‘Key West’ and Other Florida Poetry by Adam Sedia The Society July 28, 2023 Art, Beauty, Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Poetry 11 Comments . Key West Rum, reeling, raunchiness, and revelry, Palms, poincianas, palaces of old— All lie behind; the Morro Castle’s hold Guards old Havana past the sparkling sea A half-day’s sail south from this furthest Key; A torrid gap that spans a war still cold, An ocean’s breadth between two worlds—I’m told— The gulf from liberty to tyranny. And yet . . . that gap of worlds grows narrower Than those this side admit, still narrowing As their land rushes to look like the other, Where now a word, a question can incur Chastisement, and no private act or thing Escapes the leer that craves to crush and smother. . . Key Largo Time forgot you, sleepy isle— Or lingers on your sun-drenched shores, Paused for relaxation while Elsewhere it runs out its course. Here there is but present—still, Unrushed; each long and languid day Melts into the next until Bygone decades seem to stay. Who can fault time’s wish to tarry Along these coasts and tropic seas, Where the sultry sunbeams marry Cooling salt-sprays in the breeze? . . South Beach Deco Simple, streamlined, sleek; _Sheer gem-cut elegance of curves and lines; __Marriage of classical and bold designs; Turquoise, yellow, pink, _Orange, white—gleaming in the tropic sun, __And lit at night with neon hues that stun. Anachronistic place, _Proud relict of that bygone time when all __Seemed new and futures dreamt could still enthrall, That saw new creeds replace _The former world as its self-trusting heirs __Built upward, poised to make the future theirs. Their works became antiques, _Mere curios admired from far away __As quaint museum pieces on display, Yet still with charm that piques _The same imagination that dared build __This once-intrepid beauty, too soon killed. The age that built this scene, _Of style and that refinement it called “class,” __Soon faded as an age of steel and glass Rejected what had been, _While shorn of vision, will, and energy— __Our age of nihilism and ennui. Bright-hued sepulchers, _Silent amid the wild, carousing fray; __Cenotaphs to an age fled fast away— But their presence stirs _A sense of longing for the art and will __That built them and may linger somewhere still. . . Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. In addition to the Society’s publications, his poems and prose works have appeared in The Chained Muse Review, Indiana Voice Journal, and other literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Trending now: 11 Responses Joseph S. Salemi July 28, 2023 Adam, I’m guessing, but it seems that you have spent your vacation this year in Florida. These are three lovely poems of nostalgia and remembrance. The first summons up memories of old Key West, and of the time when there was a real difference between America and the Communist cesspool of Cuba. The sonnet’s sestet is really troubling. The second one on Key Largo serves as a counterpoint — on this small key, time seems to have stood still, and all things remain as they were, drenched in tropical beauty. The third on South Beach is a much more complex poem. There is nostalgia for the past, as recognized by its surviving architecture and curios, but with a deeper recognition that South Beach was once new and trendy and avant garde. And the older impulse that built and decorated the place has now given way to nihilistic “steel and glass.” The older relics now seem like “cenotaphs” and “sepulchers.” This raises the troubling question: Was the earlier Art Deco impulse any different from the newer inhuman glass and steel, or are they both simply passing fads? Or, as Adam suggests at the poem’s close, is there some enduring aesthetic impulse that survives in us, and that can summon up the craftsmanship and willpower to create beautiful things once more? These questions are not just about architecture, but about all the arts — and poetry in particular. P.S. The alliteration in the first two lines of “Key West” is fantastic! Reply Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 I did indeed spend my vacation in Miami Beach et al. My wife took me there for the first time seven years ago and this is our third time visiting (cheap airfare helps). It proved a fertile source of inspiration. I have many more unfinished works from the trip that I’m still working on. Miami Beach and New Orleans are two of my favorite places in the country — and not for the reasons everyone else goes there. In Miami Beach’s case, I love the art deco style; it is the last gasp of real creativity before things went off the rails — a new take on classical forms (and with its affinity for expensive materials and decorative flourish, quintessentially aristocratic). So you can imagine how I felt walking along blocks and blocks of some of the best preserved art deco buildings anywhere. I’m glad you were able to sense what I was trying to capture in that poem. Reply Roy Eugene Peterson July 28, 2023 All three of your Florida poems evoke different thoughts and feelings. It is well all three are together in a pastiche of flavors, sights and themes. “Key West” begins with an attractive alliteration or two, then makes a powerful statement about the continuing cold war, but the gap between tyranny and democracy is narrowing as our culture devolves into autocracy. “Key Largo” in your depiction seems like an idyllic place for a vacation away from the world and invites everyone to forget their troubles. “South Beach Deco” seems ambivalent about the neon signs on the antique architecture at once stunning, yet somehow out of place. I enjoyed each of your poems for different reasons. Reply Margaret Coats July 28, 2023 A beautiful trio on my native state, Adam. “Key Largo” is a song that could be sung (with local variations) of many little places in Florida, island or beachfront or mainland. Nature is luxuriant and time is slow. You particularize the theme quite well. The Key West sonnet is admirable. While it begins locally, it turns toward Key West’s symbolic identity as a place of limits. You move very quickly beyond Florida and even beyond the United States to speak of the detrimental erasure of limits in globalism. Anyone anywhere can take this poem as a warning of what is happening to his or her present home, as well as to a fondly remembered homeland. The South Beach poem gets you up the Atlantic coast out of the southernmost Florida Keys and into the central Florida region where I grew up. Building “upward, poised to make the future theirs” relays a touch of the Tower of Babel, to my mind. Love that second stanza. That time when “futures dreamt could still enthrall” does seem to have disappeared in economic and environmental concerns. Styles have changed; preservation of built beauty and natural beauty is more important. You speak well to say that the older buildings that really manifested beauty still stir a longing for the art and will to create it. Joseph points out that your implied questions about art and will concern all the arts. I think we can speak not only of reviving whatever was good in period styles like Deco, but of local impulses. Joe and I have talked about the fact that formal poetry in some state and local societies survived modernism for decades. That included Florida, where Vivian Yeiser Laramore Rader was state laureate from 1931 to 1975. Her efforts lacked funding, her prestige was ultimately eclipsed by academics, and I don’t know the later story of her views, her work, and the school she started. Something to ponder as we go forward, in and from various localities. Reply Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 Glad to hear from a native Floridian. I’m a huge fan of your state. I drove along US 1 from the mainland all the way to Key West. It was one of my favorite experiences, and one I would recommend to anyone. The Florida Keys have a sense of easygoingness that I admire (and envy), and I wanted to capture that in “Key Largo.” Driving into Key West from the east (versus stopping on a cruise ship, which I did years ago) is also interesting; you get to see the “real” island and not just the bars along Duval St. There were many directions in which I could have taken the poem, but given the current climate I felt it right to write a “Debbie downer” poem about such an otherwise wonderful and fun place. (“Key West as a place of limits” — I like that!) Your comment about state and local poetry intrigues me, and I’d like to look more into that. Perhaps an essay is called for. Here in Indiana, we live under the shadow of James Whitcomb Riley, and Hoosier poets until quite recently always paid homage to his musical and folksy style — see, for example, E.A. Richardson, Indiana’s first unofficial poet laureate (the position did not become official until 2005). I was a member of a local poetry society here for some years, and formal verse was by far the preferred style. Reply Cynthia Erlandson July 28, 2023 I absolutely love your personification of Time in “Key Largo”: you’ve portrayed Time forgetting, lingering, relaxing, staying, wishing. In “Key West”, the contrast — “the torrid gap” — between a world of freedom and a world of tyranny is a breathtaking and memorable image. “The leer that craves to crush and smother” is a perfect, and attention-grabbing, phrase. “New creeds”, as I believe you’ve suggested in “South Beach Deco”, can and do logically lead to changes from “style and refinement”, to structures “shorn of vision, will, and energy — Our age of nihilism and ennui”. (love that rhyme!) Reply Cheryl Corey July 29, 2023 What a wonderful trio — good placement by Evan following Margaret’s “Seaside Resort”. The dark overtone in the latter part of “Key West” brings to mind how dangerously close cartel power and influence exists directly across our southern border, courtesy of the current White House occupant. “South Beach Deco” nicely conveys that charming style. Let’s hope it never changes. I still recall how Trump wanted federal buildings to reflect the design of our Greco-Roman heritage; instead, there’s too much of the “steel and glass” that you refer to. Reply Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 Official U.S. government architecture is a crime against humanity. They say look for the biggest, ugliest building with the ugliest sculpture in front of it, and chances are that’s the federal building. Also look up how Trump’s appointments to the Arts Council were harassed and forced off of it. The globalist/elitist Left sees art as a political weapon; our side needs to recognize its importance, too, if we hope to get anywhere. Unfortunately, it seems Trump was the only one who seemed to care. Reply Julian D. Woodruff July 29, 2023 3 places I’ll never see, but sharing what’s happened there and how those developments affect us, as Joseph points out, in so many places and in so many ways. I love the 1st line of “Key West”: no words could serve better what is evoked; also “A torrid gap that spans a war still cold.” Reply Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 “Never say never.” 😉 Thank you for the comment. Reply Shaun C. Duncan August 1, 2023 I’ve never visited Florida, but “Key West” and “Key Largo” both have a wonderful sense of place and history. The cultural and aesthetic concerns of “South Beach Deco” resonate with me a little more. Art Deco really was the last attempt at some sort of rapprochement between the modern and the traditional before the mechanised and tellingly-called International Style took over. You’ve done well to capture the beauty of the deco style and the nostalgia it evokes in lines as sleek and tastefully adorned as the architecture itself, as well as the horror of what followed. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Joseph S. Salemi July 28, 2023 Adam, I’m guessing, but it seems that you have spent your vacation this year in Florida. These are three lovely poems of nostalgia and remembrance. The first summons up memories of old Key West, and of the time when there was a real difference between America and the Communist cesspool of Cuba. The sonnet’s sestet is really troubling. The second one on Key Largo serves as a counterpoint — on this small key, time seems to have stood still, and all things remain as they were, drenched in tropical beauty. The third on South Beach is a much more complex poem. There is nostalgia for the past, as recognized by its surviving architecture and curios, but with a deeper recognition that South Beach was once new and trendy and avant garde. And the older impulse that built and decorated the place has now given way to nihilistic “steel and glass.” The older relics now seem like “cenotaphs” and “sepulchers.” This raises the troubling question: Was the earlier Art Deco impulse any different from the newer inhuman glass and steel, or are they both simply passing fads? Or, as Adam suggests at the poem’s close, is there some enduring aesthetic impulse that survives in us, and that can summon up the craftsmanship and willpower to create beautiful things once more? These questions are not just about architecture, but about all the arts — and poetry in particular. P.S. The alliteration in the first two lines of “Key West” is fantastic! Reply
Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 I did indeed spend my vacation in Miami Beach et al. My wife took me there for the first time seven years ago and this is our third time visiting (cheap airfare helps). It proved a fertile source of inspiration. I have many more unfinished works from the trip that I’m still working on. Miami Beach and New Orleans are two of my favorite places in the country — and not for the reasons everyone else goes there. In Miami Beach’s case, I love the art deco style; it is the last gasp of real creativity before things went off the rails — a new take on classical forms (and with its affinity for expensive materials and decorative flourish, quintessentially aristocratic). So you can imagine how I felt walking along blocks and blocks of some of the best preserved art deco buildings anywhere. I’m glad you were able to sense what I was trying to capture in that poem. Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson July 28, 2023 All three of your Florida poems evoke different thoughts and feelings. It is well all three are together in a pastiche of flavors, sights and themes. “Key West” begins with an attractive alliteration or two, then makes a powerful statement about the continuing cold war, but the gap between tyranny and democracy is narrowing as our culture devolves into autocracy. “Key Largo” in your depiction seems like an idyllic place for a vacation away from the world and invites everyone to forget their troubles. “South Beach Deco” seems ambivalent about the neon signs on the antique architecture at once stunning, yet somehow out of place. I enjoyed each of your poems for different reasons. Reply
Margaret Coats July 28, 2023 A beautiful trio on my native state, Adam. “Key Largo” is a song that could be sung (with local variations) of many little places in Florida, island or beachfront or mainland. Nature is luxuriant and time is slow. You particularize the theme quite well. The Key West sonnet is admirable. While it begins locally, it turns toward Key West’s symbolic identity as a place of limits. You move very quickly beyond Florida and even beyond the United States to speak of the detrimental erasure of limits in globalism. Anyone anywhere can take this poem as a warning of what is happening to his or her present home, as well as to a fondly remembered homeland. The South Beach poem gets you up the Atlantic coast out of the southernmost Florida Keys and into the central Florida region where I grew up. Building “upward, poised to make the future theirs” relays a touch of the Tower of Babel, to my mind. Love that second stanza. That time when “futures dreamt could still enthrall” does seem to have disappeared in economic and environmental concerns. Styles have changed; preservation of built beauty and natural beauty is more important. You speak well to say that the older buildings that really manifested beauty still stir a longing for the art and will to create it. Joseph points out that your implied questions about art and will concern all the arts. I think we can speak not only of reviving whatever was good in period styles like Deco, but of local impulses. Joe and I have talked about the fact that formal poetry in some state and local societies survived modernism for decades. That included Florida, where Vivian Yeiser Laramore Rader was state laureate from 1931 to 1975. Her efforts lacked funding, her prestige was ultimately eclipsed by academics, and I don’t know the later story of her views, her work, and the school she started. Something to ponder as we go forward, in and from various localities. Reply
Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 Glad to hear from a native Floridian. I’m a huge fan of your state. I drove along US 1 from the mainland all the way to Key West. It was one of my favorite experiences, and one I would recommend to anyone. The Florida Keys have a sense of easygoingness that I admire (and envy), and I wanted to capture that in “Key Largo.” Driving into Key West from the east (versus stopping on a cruise ship, which I did years ago) is also interesting; you get to see the “real” island and not just the bars along Duval St. There were many directions in which I could have taken the poem, but given the current climate I felt it right to write a “Debbie downer” poem about such an otherwise wonderful and fun place. (“Key West as a place of limits” — I like that!) Your comment about state and local poetry intrigues me, and I’d like to look more into that. Perhaps an essay is called for. Here in Indiana, we live under the shadow of James Whitcomb Riley, and Hoosier poets until quite recently always paid homage to his musical and folksy style — see, for example, E.A. Richardson, Indiana’s first unofficial poet laureate (the position did not become official until 2005). I was a member of a local poetry society here for some years, and formal verse was by far the preferred style. Reply
Cynthia Erlandson July 28, 2023 I absolutely love your personification of Time in “Key Largo”: you’ve portrayed Time forgetting, lingering, relaxing, staying, wishing. In “Key West”, the contrast — “the torrid gap” — between a world of freedom and a world of tyranny is a breathtaking and memorable image. “The leer that craves to crush and smother” is a perfect, and attention-grabbing, phrase. “New creeds”, as I believe you’ve suggested in “South Beach Deco”, can and do logically lead to changes from “style and refinement”, to structures “shorn of vision, will, and energy — Our age of nihilism and ennui”. (love that rhyme!) Reply
Cheryl Corey July 29, 2023 What a wonderful trio — good placement by Evan following Margaret’s “Seaside Resort”. The dark overtone in the latter part of “Key West” brings to mind how dangerously close cartel power and influence exists directly across our southern border, courtesy of the current White House occupant. “South Beach Deco” nicely conveys that charming style. Let’s hope it never changes. I still recall how Trump wanted federal buildings to reflect the design of our Greco-Roman heritage; instead, there’s too much of the “steel and glass” that you refer to. Reply
Adam Sedia July 30, 2023 Official U.S. government architecture is a crime against humanity. They say look for the biggest, ugliest building with the ugliest sculpture in front of it, and chances are that’s the federal building. Also look up how Trump’s appointments to the Arts Council were harassed and forced off of it. The globalist/elitist Left sees art as a political weapon; our side needs to recognize its importance, too, if we hope to get anywhere. Unfortunately, it seems Trump was the only one who seemed to care. Reply
Julian D. Woodruff July 29, 2023 3 places I’ll never see, but sharing what’s happened there and how those developments affect us, as Joseph points out, in so many places and in so many ways. I love the 1st line of “Key West”: no words could serve better what is evoked; also “A torrid gap that spans a war still cold.” Reply
Shaun C. Duncan August 1, 2023 I’ve never visited Florida, but “Key West” and “Key Largo” both have a wonderful sense of place and history. The cultural and aesthetic concerns of “South Beach Deco” resonate with me a little more. Art Deco really was the last attempt at some sort of rapprochement between the modern and the traditional before the mechanised and tellingly-called International Style took over. You’ve done well to capture the beauty of the deco style and the nostalgia it evokes in lines as sleek and tastefully adorned as the architecture itself, as well as the horror of what followed. Reply
