...so make something, why don't you

What poets and glassblowers have in common

Picture published September 2021 in “Skylights,” the blog of Tanglewood Conservatory, Denton, MD.

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[This is a revised version of a post that appeared here first in June 2024.]

When I drafted this poem I turned my notebook sideways, to give myself the whole length of the page. Long lines, is what I’m saying. ‘Way easier to read on a full-size screen.

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ATELIER                                                                                   2014


Someone has made a television diary of Dale Chihuly
at work on a show of art glass for the DeYoung Museum,
and for an hour I sit mesmerized and watch this pirate-shirted,
round-bellied sprite with grey curls and an eyepatch
lumber through his enormous studio, calling color and light
into shape and substance — forms and hues nesting,
rooted, in one another, each massive fragile brightness
created as itself, then joined to others:  column, blossom, 
chandelier, each called together from a hundred parts, 
each seeming to explode whole, alive, into air
in one intricate burst. In the museum, wide-eyed crowds 
shuffle through rooms full of works placed just so, works full 
of pieces placed just so, pieces each a miracle of shape, color, light — 
 				   				
and what the crowds don’t see (unless this film-diary catches them too) 
is the willing village at work in Chihuly’s atelier: 
young men who heave and spin the molten glass and shape it while he
    watches;
the silver-haired witch who murmurs to him while she blends paints and dyes
that he then daubs, dollops, swirls with such off-hand prodigal authority;
metal-smiths coaxing bright wire into shapes (horse’s head, arrow, sun)
that he then melds to glass; a room full of clear voices and hard hands
to clap and hoot and cheer when each new-fired, never-seen-before shape
is hoisted for the last time from the furnace,
carried high in triumph down the room to a cooling shelf. 

Well, I think, what he does is no more silly
than making poems; there is room in the world, love even
in the world for Chihuly’s glass, so write something why don’t you, 
find the artisans inside yourself to help you shape a new creation — 
one who stokes the furnace to a transforming heat, one who mixes
undiscovered colors, one who lifts a cold and clumsy lump 
at the end of a heavy rod and sets it spinning in the blaze, 
melting, bending as you watch until you recognize the shape of something
never seen before, then one who shouts in triumph and hoists it high,
carries it down the long room of your heart and sets it to rest (softly,
softly, to rest — they shatter, these shapes) in a place where it can breathe
and cool; sets it down next to uncounted others, while you catch your breath
and muse on which shape goes where, what new design their joining will
    create,
how best to balance and connect. Surely all these ones are you
and more than merely you, surely within the walls of your capacious self 
is room for a village to be at work: vision, heat, muscle, craft, and above all
    that shout 
ringing down the room as a new truth rises, massive and fragile, from the fire.

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I drafted this poem (lengthwise in my notebook) in 2014, literally right after watching a PBS documentary on Chihuly and his work. Before I published it here in 2024 I revised the poem some: partly to get the line-breaks less clunky, mostly to underline one of the points that the poem wants to make, an ironic point about the glassblower surrounded by skilled helpers in his studio¹ and the poet sitting at her desk alone except for the voices in her head.

Early and late, though, the heart of the poem for me is in the lines: “there is room in the world, love even / in the world for Chihuly’s glass, so write something why don’t you….” All that imagination, passion, effort, spent on creating something that in practical terms is completely useless? Yes, go for it. “Useful” doesn’t always mean what you think it means.

We tell each other this a lot on Substack; it bears repeating. Make the thing. See how the making changes you, see how the world makes room for what you’ve made. Maybe you’ll see whose eyes light up when they look at your work and maybe you won’t, but the light will still be there. And a little light shines a long way.

1. Injuries from a car crash years ago left Dale Chihuly blind in one eye and unable to do the heavy lifting involved in shaping molten glass. He conceives and sketches his creations and works closely with the skilled assistants who carry out his ideas.