Years ago my mom gave me a pin that said, “learn to read poetry.” I, in turn, gave her a postcard that I made saying, “learn to read pottery.” Recently, in the cold weather I have often made tea not because I wanted to drink it but because I wanted to hold the warm cup. The poetry of pottery is what we make of the dirt. The poetry is best communicated through our touch and use and yet I continue to take photographs.

I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”),
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

—Elizabeth Alexander, in American Sublime, Graywolf Press, 2005