I forgot that my mother made books with me as a child until I found (after my father died) the remnants of my drawings and her words in a folder in the basement. I loved discovering these small construction paper efforts, because I had made so many books with my daughter– tiny folded and stapled pages with scribbles and words. The books I made as a child were clearly not evidence that I was a poet, but testimony that my mother was paying attention even though I was the third child.
The little books I made with my mother attest to the way I wrote backwards and highlight my love of drawing. No one was keeping score but these scribbles captured my particular gestures. The books were boundaries within which to explore.
When I make pots I love the constraint of making functional pottery, but simultaneously I have a very broad definition of the idea of function. Today’s vase maybe seen as a shard. It began as a circle and then became a shape one can slip through– and yet the pot is something you can hold in your hand and turn.
What is grandeur? Who is keeping score?
I believe in the circle, in light that surprises me, when I can
believe nothing. The palm reaching out is a gesture,
a boundary, a circle one could slip through, or something
you could hold and in turn it could hold you back.
–Ada Limón, excerpt from “In the End Everything Gives.” The full poem, properly formatted can be found at this link thanks to the National Gallery of Art