Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (Paperback)

~ (Author) "CENTERING: that act which precedes all others on the potter's wheel..." (more)
Key Phrases: centering process, hunger for freedom, bodying forth, Black Mountain College, New York, Rudolph Steiner

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book, in its form and in its content, seems almost without precedent. Its style flows directly from an intensity, an honesty, and a frankness which are rare. It is a poem, a sutra, a tract, a confession, a revelation, a guide to art and life . . . In my opinion this is not merely a good book, it is a great book"--Daniel Rhodes, Crafts Horizons

Review

"What shall we do with our emotions? Suffer them, I hear her saying. The subject she teaches isn't listed in the catalogues. Sooner or later we know we're studying with her. How is she and where? I am okay and growing, and trying to concentrate on really carrying this through. It ain't easy, or comfortable, but here we are, right? Not only the Devil, but the Lord, too, is on earth and doing His work beautifully." (John Cage )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; 2 Revised edition (May 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819562009
• ISBN-13: 978-0819562005
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #166,310 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic book on holistic poetics & pedagogy., July 21, 1999

By	DJ Rix (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Innumerable poets, potters, artists & teachers have been touched by Mary Caroline Richards. Ever attentive to the whole person, Richards shows that a truly liberating creativity arises out of compassion, an attentive stillness of soul, self-acceptance & a delight in creative "accidents." For Richards, the words "teacher" and "student" are interchangeable. She gently reminds us that she is talking about life, no matter what she seems to be saying. Richards is one of the most important teachers grown in America. If you want to know why, read "Centering."

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is the potter's wheel. We are the clay., December 18, 2001

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Have you ever read CENTERING?" a friend asked me. "That book changed my life," she explained, with a knowing smile, "and I'll even loan you my copy." M. C. Richards was a potter, teacher, and poet, and her 1962 book is "a story of transformation" (p. 4). In his Foreward to the 25th Anniversay Edition of M.C.'s "truly subversive book" (p. ix), Matthew Fox writes, "I consider this book one of the great works of American philosophy: it is so cosmological, so feminist (without once using that term), so original, so full of wisdom, so post Cartesian, so nondualistic, so moral, and so fully a part of the mystical tradition of the West that one wonders from what source it arrived in our world . . . This is a prophetic and mystical book. Such books are dangerous. They are the kind dictators burn, churches tend to ignore, and consumer cultures leave on the shelf. For they have the power to awaken, to stir, to disturb, and to transform" (pp. vii-viii).

After forty years, CENTERING remains as relevant as ever. The good news is that it's still in print. M. C. observes that, in our society, "ordinary education and social training seem to impoverish the capacity for free initiative and artistic imagination. We talk indepedence, but we enact conformity . . . Brains are washed (when they are not clogged), wills are standardized, that is to say immobilized. Someone within cries for help. There must be more to life than all these learned acts, all this highly conditioned consumption. A person wants to do something of his own, to feel his own being alive and unique. He wants out of bondage. He wants in to the promised land" (p. 43).

Wisdom arrives through a childlike sense of wonder, or through "centering," as M. C. calls it. "Within us lives a merciful being," she observes, "who helps us to our feet however many times we fall" (p. 8). "Wisdom is not the product of mental effort," she tells us. Rather, it is a state of "total being, in which capacities for knowledge and for love, for survival and for death, for imagination, inspiration, intuition, for all the fabulous functioning of this human being who we are, come into a center with their forces, come into an experience of meaning that can voice itself as wise action" (p. 15). She encourages us to "ride our lives like natural beasts, like tempests, like the bounce of a ball or the slightest ambiguous hovering of ash, the drift of scent: let us stick to those currents that can carry us, membering them with our souls. Our world personifies us, we know ourselves by it" (p. 7). "I sense this," she writes; "we must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration; to breathe with them, mobile and soft in the limberness of our bodies, in our agility, our ability, as it were, to dance, and yet to stand upright, to be intact, to be persons" (p. 12). CENTERING is a "sensual, sexual, trusting" book "full of surprises" (p. xv) you'll want to share with your friends.

G. Merritt

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Written from a life centered in wisdom:, July 25, 1999

By	Linda Orlin (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This book is a classic! I came across it in the '70's and now, again, when I am old enough to understand the depth of Mary Caroline Richard's wisdom. She truly knows what life-generating relationships are about. The best news about this book is that it is still in print.