I am at the end of the cycle of making for the wood kiln. I have had intuitive lists of things to make. Some shapes take more effort and forethought but at this point I cannot second guess what I make. Often on the last day of wet work I feel like I don’t have enough tall narrow things. So I make a final series as supports for other objects; it feels like I am making aesthetic kiln furniture. This time around the last things in process are coming from my artistic ancestors. I can see the influences of native American pots or Silla dynasty Korean forms. There might be a bit of the syntax of Japanese Shigaraki storage jars or Chinese Han dynasty compositions. But there is always the influence of the Virginia clay soil that grows so many flowers as well as the porch dinners where pots are used and shared, arriving at completion.
Every poem has poetry ancestors. My poetry would not exist without Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival,” without Mvskoke stomp dance call-and-response, without Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck,” without Meridel Le Sueur or N. Scott Momaday, without death or sunrise, without Walt Whitman, or Navajo horse songs, or Langston Hughes, without rain, without grief, without—
-Joy Harjo, from Every Poem Has Ancestors in The Paris Review [Link]