Ron Cooley on fri 30 aug 96
For all lovers of pottery and poetry hers's something you may not have seen.
I'm afraid it's a little long for a plaque or pot (and it's not even the
whole poem)
It's fron the 17th C. English sacred poet George Herbert, in his poem "The
Priesthood". Needless to say, the "thou" in the poem is God:
But thou art fire, sacred and hallow'd fire;
And I but earth and clay: should I presume
To wear thy habit, the severe attire
My slender composition might consume.
I am both foul and brittle; much unfit
To deal in holy writ.
Yet I have often seen, by cunning hand
And force of fire, what curious things are made
Of wretched earth. Where once I scorn'd to stand,
That earth is fitted by the fire and trade
Of skilful artists, for the boards of those
Who make the bravest shows.
But since those great ones, be they ne'er so great,
Come from the earth, from whence those vessels come;
So that at once both feeder, dish and meat
Have one beginning and one final summe:
I do not greatly wonder at the sight,
If earth in earth delight.
There's more, though these tree stanzas are the only ones that explore the
pottery metaphor. Ashes to ashes, clay to clay!
Ron Cooley
Tamsin A. Whitehead on mon 9 sep 96
This little excerpt I found in Robert Piepenburg's "Raku", and is part of
a longer poem about the tea ceremony, by Sen-no Rikyu (1521-1591 AD). I
really like it!!
If you have one pot
And can make your tea in it
That will do quite well.
How much does he lack himself
Who must have a lot of things.
When you hear the splash
Of the water drops that fall
Into the stone bowl
You will feel that all the dust
Of your mind is washed away.
Tamsin
Nottingham, NH
Autumn Downey on tue 2 may 00
You've heard of cowboy poetry? One of our Guild members suggested pottery
poetry - (lots of scope for laments). So we had a workshop/social on the
weekend, and the results can be seen here:
http://users.internorth.com/~downeya/adweb/poetry.htm
It was fun!
Autumn Downey
Jean Cochran on wed 3 may 00
O.K., now I'll bet you've started something! I enjoyed your poetry
site. Thank you for sharing with all of us.
I have a couple to share. The first one was written for me by a dear
friend who died this past Christmas Eve.
JEANI
Her sure hands center
then open the clay cylinder.
Threads of lemon-colored silk
fall on her forehead.
Beads of sweat dot her upper lip
as she molds and shapes at the wheel.
Her thoughts go to the beach
Where waves crescendo like Zelda's madness.
Hermit crabs skitter into holes in the sand.
Clouds like flannel strands undulate
and change on a canvas of sky.
Gulls quarrel over the carcass of a mullet.
Pelicans hover overhead waiting
for the right moment to dive and plunder.
Wind twirls an ancient lullaby in her mind --
And the rhythm....
Always the rhythm....
Pandora's box of old wounds
old scars, old indignities
disappears as clay metamorphoses
into fragile vase --
into woman --
Sea-Woman.
R. Wallace Clark
July 27, 1990
Cedar Key, Florida
(for Jean Cochran potting away in New Haven, Kentucky)
The second is the words to a song written for me by my brother, who
writes country songs.
THE FOX HOLLOW POTTER
(chorus)
As the wheel turns in motion
The layman can't understand
Oh, what is this magic
She holds in her hands.
A piece of earth before her
Turns to beauty they say
This girl in Fox Hollow
With her wheel and her clay.
She came up from Florida
To these old Kentucky hills,
To the land of Abe Lincoln
And the moonshiner stills.
Just following her dreams
As so many folks do
Her wheel stayed in motion
Till her dreams became true.
Now she is a potter
In this Kentucky town of a few.
Friend if you need a mug
Jean will make one for you.
- Chorus -
Written for the potter, Jean Cochran By
Her Brother, Jim Crowe, July 27, 1993
Pancioli on tue 18 jul 00
To Be Of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Marge Piercy
Diana
Dupre Mr Marcy M on wed 9 apr 03
A very good friend gave me a book of poetry titled, "Thursday's Child," by
Francis C. Gray.
One of the poems is called, "Finding Pottery in the Desert," which I found
delightful.
"The wheel that turned
the clay that burned
and hardened into this cracked vase
was formed by one
who saw the sun
pass over this deserted place.
"The God whose form
creates the norm
of all artistic things I see
first made the clay
and shards that lay
connecting ancient man with me."
In posts a few months ago, several folks mentioned dropping pots into the
lake, burying them in the desert, leaving them in places for future
archeologists to find. I wonder if the same sense of a "String of History"
was felt by ancient potters? Could it be that besides creating the piles
detritus and effluvium that humans pile on the outskirts of civilization,
potters deliberately placed a piece of work or two, like a handprint on a
cave wall, "I was here. I made this."
I think we all secretly want a small bit of immortality, to not be
forgotten. If a shard of clay deposited carefully in the soil can give me a
sense of future comfort, why not?
The other thought that crossed my mind is despite the vast numbers of
potters in the world, compared to the general population, we are relatively
few. Our society of Them What Plays With Clay has but a few hundred
thousand practitioners. No main point to make, just the feeling that it is
a small, select bunch of us who have the calling, whether hobbyist or
careerist, dabbler or teacher. It's a comforting thought.
It is also somewhat disconcerting to know that thousands of years from now,
some archeologist will find my mistakes, and wonder if our civilization was
really so primitive? Heh, heh, heh...
Just some stray thoughts on a dreary, gray, wet Spring day.
Tig
Cher Gauvin on thu 10 apr 03
Hey Tig,
Great poem, great thoughts, great idea. I think I'm going to take my
best pot and bury it...as a gift to Mother Nature for Her gift of clay. I
guess I missed the thread about burying pottery. I'll have to check out the
archives.
Here's a poem I found in a picture frame, under a layer of backing, at
a garage sale for a quarter. It gave me twenty-five cents worth of pleasure
just the first time I read it. I keep the poem over my desk and re-read it
everyday.
Handcrafted
With artistic persuasion the potter molds the
clay into a beautiful work of art.
The eye delights in form and shape,
in things handcrafted from the heart.
Our lives are like that potters clay
ours to fashion as we may-
like earthenwares of brown and blue,
our lives can be useful, and beautiful too!
Bee Ewing
I'm learning that throwing a pot is such a metaphor for living my
life. Almost two years ago, when I first signed on clayart, and was much
less experienced in clay and life, I naively sent a post that stated
something about how I let the clay tell me what to do...and got my butt stomp
ed on. I've learned. I now tell the clay what I want it to be. It's still
a dance that I do with the clay, but now I'm leading instead of following.
Life is like that, isn't it? Ours to fashion as we may-
Cher Gauvin
...and how 'bout those Jar Heads, huh Tig? Your young men and women
students are still in my prayers. My mother has been busy sewing camouflage
dust masks and collecting pantyhose for care packages that the Women's'
Auxiliary is sending over to the troops. Remind them that they are
appreciated.
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