Craft as Metaphor

For many years I was director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where I got to witness firsthand the power of both craft and community. But before that, as a poet, what attracted me first to craft was metaphor. Seeing a potter forming a vessel, watching a weaver at the loom, or a smith hammering metal, spoke to me not only of the skilled hand and its tacit knowledge, but also as a metaphor for how humans have the ability to shape the world. It can speak to a harmony between maker and material. There is an implied ingenuity and sympathy in these acts of creating. In a way it’s saying the world is in our hands.

And if the world is in our hands, then what is our obligation as makers? It’s not just to make things, but to make things better. I’m not talking just about design, although elegant and thoughtful design can change the way we act in the world, but about what we can do as creative people and how craft—a language that moves easily beyond political borders—is a way of building community.

In our fragile world, perhaps we can make a metaphor for ourselves as menders, the ones who can repair those things that are torn and broken.

Holding the Light
for Kait Rhoads

Gather up whatever is 
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled 
in the waves or fallen 
in flames out of the sky,
for it’s not only our
hearts that are broken, 
but the heart
of the world as well.
Stitch it back together.
Make a place where
the day speaks to the night
and the earth speaks to the sky.
Whether we created God
or God created us
it all comes down to this:
In our imperfect world
we are meant to repair
and stitch together 
what beauty there is, stitch it
with compassion and wire. 
See how everything 
we have made gathers 
the light inside itself
and overflows? A blessing.
Stuart Kestenbaum
from Only Now (Deerbrook Editions)
Stuart Kestenbaum is a strategist for the Craft School Experience, host of Make/Time podcasts and Maine’s poet laureate.

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