Wednesday, February 28, 2007

An Isleta potter : Edward S. Curtis


An Isleta potter

Almost everything we touch
is of this earth. Adobe. Clay.
The woman sitting in a faded
photograph. And if that very
photograph were in my hand,
that too. Its film of chemicals,
its paper stock. And if my eyes
were seeing nothing but the black
and white, those too. But light! And shadows
of the bushes falling on
that wall! And shapes of things we see—
like the potter and her pottery.

Son Rivers 2007

from Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images from Northwestern University.


2 comments:

CoralPoetry said...

Hi,

You have a wonderful blog, which I have bookmarked for further perusal of the archives at a later time.

This is a beautiful sequence of vignettes capturing the ekphrastic moments involved in the sculpture of the clay.

Please visit my poetry when you have a moment.

Regards,
Coral

Anonymous said...

Grapez:
Your interest in Edward S. Curtis surely shouldn't end here. Take a look at The Indian Picture Opera, a film of a Curtis lecture of a century ago. www.curtisdvd.com