Some DJPH poems

Our visit to David Hooker’s studio a couple of weeks back has resulted in a variety of very interesting poetic responses, some focused more on David’s work, some focused more on his process. Below is a sampling of what’s been written, with more to come (this is a request for students to send them to me electronically, so I can cut and paste rather than retype).
David’s work is included in a current exhibit at Loyola University in Chicago, the show for which he was making final preparations when he talked with us.

He'll also be giving a talk as part of the Humanities Brown Bag forum this Friday on campus. He claims not to like prose about his work, but you can find some of his drafts of artist statements (along with other ramblings) at his engaging blog.



Functional and Beautiful

For those of you looking for Christmas gifts, David is also busy finishing bowls and mugs that look lovely and functional.


Some of the Hooker Poems


I have been in a ceramics studio--Ian A.

I’ve been in a ceramics studio, yes
I have. And seen the halves of broken
halves of pre-configured clay, collected
in boxes and shelved behind, waiting
for your hammer and you
to sledge out their inconsistencies
like God, only not quite as gradually

as your “Gun-toting Guernica,” but
sometimes that thought can sit, subdued
for months if you fight it when you say
you lobbied for the loud, garbage on the walls
of your college dormitory, the poetry
you would write, such perfunctory verse
could never contain you,

but that’s just a hope to fill the waiting
like we’re waiting, but then it came to you,
yes you said, an idea to solidify
in the absence of could it be
a thousand, giving themselves up
to be the smashed bodies behind, waiting
even more for some kind of redemption
to come, only not quite as bloodily.



David Hooker’s mantis –Dayna C.

The legs force the sculpture
like his fingers in your jeans
whose pistol bruises
the arch of your back.
All the natural dangers
pervert into a man.

We bruise like peaches
and have. We’ve held
the rail at the Canyon,
our adrenaline tart,
because despite what we’ve said
where we’re standing
is the start of the fault.

An Unglazed Frame for Absence--Rachel H.

The ceramic dog, hangs
from a nail in my dusty studio wall,
with an absence for feet, framed
by marbled terra cotta bisque,
right to be naked, fired clay
rough against soft fingers.
Every glance of his master asked,
"Is it right, or is it easy?"
Each kneading touch questioned
if the dog should hang on the nail,
on the plain wall, patient for grief.


Clay—Jason A.

We have but dirt to form a wandering mind,
Brittle crust that shatters between fingers
The formless mud in which our members bind
All to build proud monuments! that linger…
Impregnable fortress against a Sea of Time
Like making bricks without straw, yet still
We grapple matter whose essence, unsublime
We are, enslave it to our sand-castle will,
To harmonize some grander whiteness, or truth
With scripted tablets formed by blood-stained hands
As though in word to ever will our youth,
In small clay ships to sail to starlit lands.
As The Captives, forming soul from rough-hewn stone
We have but adobe slums to call our own.


At First Glance You May Mistake His Artistic Genius for Postmodern Garble—Joe M.

His slightly random 3-
Dimensional cornucopia 
Made of clay has a praying

Mantis, headless deer,
And “quick Draw McGraw”
Holds a silver gun,

But look at how he holds
The elbow in tension
Just barely above the base,

IE: (how Michelangelo held
Adam’s finger,
With the slightest space

From touching God)

His headless “Bob the Builder”
Creates intentional spa c e,
He has Britney Spears 

And Jesus waiting on a mantel,
But nothing he shows us has he 
Not seen before while driving

The highways of his mind,
Things at first, still life
Drenched in anecdotal glory,

His art expressing the tension in presence
And

Absence

How he speaks silently of

L
 
o

S
 
s