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rough ideas

#7 decembrance 2024

When I talk about pottery I often use the phrase the seeds of ideas. I describe what I have been looking at in nature, or what I have been inspired by historically. I might use words to refer to a line, material, or scent but it is the feeling, the heft, the impression I am searching for. The pot is like a poem that opens the reference to spring when the pond is frozen, or mentions planting seeds when stuck in the short, frigid days of December.

The Presence in Absence

Poetry is not made of words.
I can say it’s January when
it’s August. I can say, “The scent
of wisteria on the second floor
of my grandmother’s house
with the door open onto the porch
in Petaluma,” while I’m living
an hour’s drive from the Mexican
border town of Ojinaga.
It is possible to be with someone
who is gone. Like the silence which
continues here in the desert while
the night train passes through Marfa
louder and louder, like the dogs whining
and barking after the train is gone.

–Linda Gregg, “The Presence in Absence” from In the Middle Distance © 2006 Linda Gregg

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