Write an entry of your own Invisible City in Calvino’s style.

In Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a fictional version of the explorer Marco Polo tells the Kubla Khan of his travels. Except, we start to realize, each of the cities he describes is an imagined one, or perhaps they all describe the same city in many different ways.

The work has been an inspiration to artists— see this link for some illustrators’ pleasing versions of the cities (https://lithub.com/art-inspired-by-italo-calvinos-invisible-cities/) and how they differ wildly from each other, even for the same entry. And the work has inspired an opera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyceQFpSOjI) that takes place in a train station as a way to reimagine form (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63OKSrwTyNI) and public space.

1. Write an entry of your own Invisible City in Calvino’s style. You can use his first entry (cities & memory 1) as a model, or any of the following entries.
2. Imagine you are describing NEW YORK to a person who has never been here, but you are trying to tell them of the city you experience. Rename the city if you like! Following Calvino’s lead, your entry should be a mix of fact, personal memory, fantasy, and imagination.
3. You are trying to capture the essence of your New York moment, rather than write a factual guidebook. You can certainly write your entry in the second person (‘you’) if you want to follow Marco Polo’s lead.

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