(no subject)

[timepiececlock]

For our first project in my ceramics class we're doing pinch-pots with black underglaze, which we are then carving through for white recessed area. The Prof urged us to try to incorporate some kind of historical or cultural "narrative" in our carving designs, from images to text . I dunno what the hell that means, but he suggested text, so I'm going for poetry.

On the outside of the bowl, in the bottom/apex, I have three rabbits in a triangle/circle around a cresent moon. And around the rabbits I have a large circular sun. Then from the rays of the sun to the edge of the bowl I have text. Here's what it will read when finished:

ALL BY ALL AND DEEP BY DEEP
AND MORE BY MORE THEY DREAM THEIR SLEEP
NOONE AND ANYONE EARTH BY APRIL
WISH BY SPIRIT AND IF BY YES.

TEACH ME TO HEAR MERMAIDS SINGING,
OR TO KEEP OFF ENVY'S STINGING,
AND FIND
WHAT WIND
SERVES TO ADVANCE AN HONEST MIND.

WHAT IF A DAWN OF A DOOM OF A DREAM
BITES THIS UNIVERSE IN TWO,
PEELS FOREVER OUT OF HIS GRAVE
AND SPRINKLES NOWHERE WITH ME AND YOU?

Of course, because it goes in a circle, the "order" depends on which side is facing upward first.


Because carving the interior just sounds like too much work at the point, I decided to leave it black and just include this, along the inside rim:

TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US


I'm on a poetry kick, if you haven't noticed. :) The first stanza's from E. E. Cummings's "anyone lived in a pretty how town". The next is from the second stanza of John Donne's "Song". The third is Cummings again, "what if a much of a which of a wind". The last line is part of the final line of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot.

I was really going for a nature/season/stars/magic/philosophy thing, and the end result is pretty good I think. All I have to do before I finish is carve the second stanza and do touch-up with the underglaze paint (like where I messed up on letter terribly.) Then it's glazed and sent into the kiln!

Comments

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! And I'd love to see a listing of contemporary poets from you. :D

Fifth grade was my longest exposure to poetry, since my homeroom teacher that year was big into it. Every week, we learned a new poem and recited it in front of the class. Of course, being fifth graders, we didn't delve into the "meaning" behind the words. My problem (used to be) with poetry was that the stuff we read when I was in junior high and most of high school were works that centered on love, romance, etc. Anyone who knows me pretty well, yeah, they know that's not my "thing". We hardly read things like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and so on until I hit my Sophomore and Senior English classes (I had the same teacher those two years). With that teacher, I learned a crapload about symbolism and to look underneath the words for alternate meanings.

In college - when I actually went - the spectrum of styles and subject matter for poetry vastly widened. During that time, I discovered poets like Siegfried Sassoon, a man who writes almost exclusively about war - the horrors of it, the pointlessness of it, and the effect it has on everyone involved with it. A couple of semesters later, I took that Intro to Humanities course, which opened even more doors, poetically speaking, to me. I'm desperately trying to recall the name of a rather popular black poet we read from, and I'm sure he's a recent contemporary. He did wonderful work about what it was to be black in America, even though I'm not.

Still, I enjoy the classics. I've been going through Robert Frost's works again, becoming more convinced that, on some level, every single one of his poems is about death.

[brigidforest.livejournal.com]

Oh! I'm so happy you mentioned Sassoon, because if you like him you might want to check out Ivor Gurney and Wilfred Owen. They touch upon the same issues, and out of the three, Wilfred Owen is probably my favorite.

Now, on the black poet... god, there's a couple, but if there's one that always stands out to me as probably the one that deeply delves into what it means to be black it's Langston Hughes.

I think if you like Robert Frost you might want to check out Theodore Roethke too. As for more recent poets, some of my favorites are Frank Bidart (he varies a lot on his poetry, lately they have been political, but he is amazing storyteller and there's some very dramatic elements in the way his poems show up on the page), Robert Bly (he's more on the spiritual side--but it's a different kind of spirituality than we're used to); W.S. Merwin is a classic to me, but a contemp and his poems pack a lot of power. Sharon Olds is another famous one, and her poems (the latest ones) are very physical and deal with a lot sexuality, so she's a bit graphic, but her poems mess with your preconceptions of human physical contact is and what it means. Other names I'd drop randomly are Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich and Brigit Pegeen Keley.

I know what you mean about love poetry. I mean, poetry in middle school was Shakespeare's sonnets and anything that had strict meter and rhyme. If someone had let me read Whitman, then maybe I would changed my mind earlier on, but it's never too late. There's a lot of great "love" poetry out that is not what I would call romantic. I'm not into that stuff either. I wouldn't pick up a romance if you threatened me, but I do see some wonderful elements in Carl Phillips, Louise Gluck, and Mary Jo Bang, who tend to write about love in pretty inventive ways.

Anyway, any time you want to talk about poetry, drop me a line. I'm not superversed or anything, but I do love it. I hope this helped a bit.

PS. Sorry to crowd your post, Rashaka, but at least I'm on topic still :)