frasera1@westatpo.westat.com on thu 29 aug 96
Does anyone have a favorite haiku or other brief poem or saying
relating to pottery that I could put on a plaque for a
potter/friend's 60 birthday party. Japanese influence is welcome.
I'd rather not have to go with "owed to a Grecian urn."
Thanks Much
Alexa
FraserA1@westat.com
Dan Wilson on fri 30 aug 96
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Does anyone have a favorite haiku or other brief poem or saying
> relating to pottery that I could put on a plaque for a
> potter/friend's 60 birthday party. Japanese influence is welcome.
A potters hand is as good as his eye
In spring he uses one
In fall he uses another
M. S. Davis on fri 30 aug 96
I would recommend the *first* line of the following (attributed to Kalidasa):
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course lie all the verities
and realities of your existence;
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today well lived, makes every
yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Another possibility is:
Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest Thou?
Isaiah 45:9
Morris Davis
Chapel Hill, NC
msd@unc.edu
On Thu, 29 Aug 1996 frasera1@westatpo.westat.com wrote:
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Does anyone have a favorite haiku or other brief poem or saying
> relating to pottery that I could put on a plaque for a
> potter/friend's 60 birthday party. Japanese influence is welcome.
>
> I'd rather not have to go with "owed to a Grecian urn."
>
> Thanks Much
>
> Alexa
> FraserA1@westat.com
>
Pilla Villa on fri 30 aug 96
frasera1@westatpo.westat.com wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Does anyone have a favorite haiku or other brief poem or saying
> relating to pottery that I could put on a plaque ..."
> Alexa
> FraserA1@westat.com
Alexa,
I like these:
"If you walk, just walk, if you sit, just sit, but whatever you do, don't
wobble." --Zen Master Unmon
and
"Making pottery should not be like climbing a mountain; it should be more
like walking down a hill in a pleasant breeze."
--Shoji Hamada
Rebecca A. Mason on sat 31 aug 96
"Earth's Celebration
Captured in Chaos' fire
Mind Stops
To probe it's journey
This Life's breath
Fills one bowl."
Rebecca Mason l996
potter-poet-zen practictioner
Jim Connell or set clayart mail on sat 31 aug 96
WINTHROP UNIVERSITY Electronic Mail Message
Date: 31-Aug-1996 12:06pm EDT
From: James Connell
CONNELLJ
Dept: Art and Design
Tel No: 323-2126
TO: SMTP%"CLAYART@lsv.uky.edu" ( _SMTP%"CLAYART@lsv.uky.edu" )
Subject: Re: Poetry
These are in Clark's George Ohr book.
"Rabbi Ben Ezra"
Ay, note that potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,-
Thou to whom fools propound
When the wine makes its round
'Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone,
seize today!'
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand
sure:
What entered into thee,
Time was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops; Potter and Clay
endure.
Robert Browning
From Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat:
None answered this; but after Silence spake
A Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
"They Sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"
(Ohr liked Khayyam a lot and even took on the title
of "Biloxies Ohrmer Kayam"--what a punster)
Jim Connell
Hendriks; Eleanor D. on tue 3 sep 96
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Stop, stop, my wheel! Too soon, too soon
The noon will be afternoon,
Too soon today will be yesterday;
Behind us in our past we cast
The broken potsherds of the past.
And all are ground to dust at last,
and trodden into clay!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Keramos 1877
Perhaps a little melancholy for a 60th Birthday party but the grains of
truth are there. Also, the first time I read this poem I thought that
the rhythm of the wheel was included in the cadence of the poem. I
imagine a poet, neat and clean with ink stained fingers mesmerized by the
magic of spinning clay and the calm frenzy of a pre-industrial production
potter working with dusty heroism.
Enough romantic supposition,
Back to the studio.
Eleanor Hendriks
Elan Fine Pottery
Fergus, Ontario, Canada
Kathryn Whipple on wed 4 sep 96
My bad! I shamefully misquoted that Kabir poem the other day. It goes more
like this:
Inside this clay jug there are canyons, and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains...
and so on. Naturally i forgot to bring the book with me today, so i still
can't give the whole thing. Besides that i have two of my fingers taped
together and am having a hard time typing...
Kathy Whipple
in brooker, fl, where we have some new mosqiutos that have proboscises (?)
the size of veteranary syringes...
Louise Jenks on wed 4 sep 96
In searching for a "pottery poem" you could include this Zen saying
attributed to the Tao Te Ching:
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
Louise, in Cincinnati
JENNY LEWIS on wed 11 sep 96
Well, it's not exactly a poem, but I liked it...
There is no sweeter solace in life for human ills than
craftsmanship; for the mind, absorbed in its study, sails past all
troubles and forgets them.
The source means nothing to me, but I dutifully copied it out of the
book where I read it, so if there are any Classics students out
there who can tell me about it, I'd love to know: Amphis,
Ampelourgos I; Meineke, Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum, III, p. 302
Quoted in G M A Richter, The Craft of the Athenian Potter, Yale
University, 1923. Definitely out of print I suppose, but I came
across it in a library and it was fascinating.
Bill Buckner on fri 24 jan 03
You say 'potato'.
I say 'potato'.
You say "tomato".
I say "tomato".
You say "tenmoku".
I say "temmoku".
You say "Tschaikovsky".
I say "Chajkovskij".
They say "Tchaikowskii".
Languages vary. It's all the same.
--
-=billBUCKNER
-=atlanta
"Life is too important to be taken seriously."
-Oscar Wilde
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