I haven't been to Venice. After reading the National Geographic story (Vanishing Venice, August 2009) on the Italian city wrought with tourists, I have lost desire.

But I am enamored with the writing of Cathy Newman, whose prose is poetry without the linebreaks. Every paragraph sings. Like the Found Poetry Project, I find myself breaking up blocks of text to fashion poems. For example:

Here, where everything anyone
needs to live and die must
be floated in, wrestled
over bridges, and muscled
up stairs, time is measured
by the breath of tides,
and space bracketed
by water.

The story concludes just as poetic:

Kisses end. Dreams vanish, and sometimes cities too. We long for the perfect ending, but the curtain falls along with our hearts.

Beauty is so difficult.

Skip the trip to Venice. Read Cathy Newman’s work instead.

Photograph by Jodi Cobb, for National Geographic.