Couplets written by a South Carolina slave on huge clay pots that now sell for $40,000 were one of slavery's earliest acts of sedition.
With lucrative hits like “Knocked Up,” “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” garnering him rave reviews over the few years, and a prestigious role just ahead in the upcoming Allen Ginsburg docudrama “Howl” that Gus Van Sant is executive producing, actor Paul Rudd should be a man with few regrets.
Well, just one small one: The poems he selected for “The Poem I Turn To: Actors & Directors Present Poetry That Inspires Them,” published in April of this year by Sourcebooks, were left out of the book.
The 80 poems selected by 42 acclaimed actors and directors – many of which are read on an accompanying CD -- include selections from Pulitzer Prize winners and Poets Laureate, as well as inspiring contemporary poets.
“The poems I had selected were written by a guy named Dave the Slave, who was an enslaved African-American potter who lived in Edgefield, South Carolina, and made pottery from 1820 to the mid-1860s,” said Rudd. “Dave is famous in part because he had the ability to turn large pieces of pottery, forty gallons or more in size, which was an incredible feat. But he even more famous because he would sometimes write short poems and couplets on the sides of his pottery – examples of which are now in Smithsonian and other museums, and some of which now sell for as much as $40,000.”
According to Rudd, the poetry of Dave (he was also known as "Dave the Potter" and "David Drake”)is one of the earliest acts of sedition in the cause of civil rights -- “because at the time it was generally forbidden for African-Americans to read and write.”
“So for a slave to write these poems and couplets on these huge, huge pots, where it was impossible for people not to see them, was an act of great bravery at the time,” says Rudd. “What is inspiring to me about Dave’s poems is that they send the message that no matter how bad your situation is, no matter how oppressed you are by people who have more money and power than you have, you can always find a way to fight back against bigotry and injustice. And people will see it.”
Rudd sent in six examples of Dave’s poetry in order to fill a page in the book -- “and I don’t know where they went, perhaps they were lost in the mail, or they ended up just not having enough room” – with each poem containing the dates the jars were cast, and the poems written.
Those poems and couplets were these:
Horses, mules and hogs
all our cows is in the bogs
there they shall ever stay
till the buzzards take them away
--29 March 1836
Great & noble jar
hold sheep goat and bear
13 May 1859
A better thing I never saw
When I shot off the lions jaw
9 November 1836
I wonder where is all my relations
Friendship to all – and every nation
16 August 1857
The sun, moon and – stars
in the west are plenty of – bears
29 July 1858
Ladies & gentlemens shoes
Sell all you can & nothing you’ll loose
29 January 1840
“’The Poem I Turn To’came about because this poet Jason Shinder went out and asked various actors and directors to share their favorite poems and explain why they like them,” says Rudd. “And the book has examples from actors and directors Alan Arkin, Peter MacNicol, Sarah Silverman, Carrie Fisher, Jane Fonda, Stanley Tucci and more.”
In the final product, says Rudd, we discover Jane Fonda's love of Rilke; Philip Seymour Hoffman's regard for Meghan O’Rourke and Eugene O’Neill, and even get to hear some of their choices read on a companion CD. Shindler, who sadly died in April, collaborated with actors Michael O'Keefe (Chevy Chase’s “Caddyshack,” “The Great Santini”) and Lili Taylor (“Dogfight,” “High Fidelity”).
Among those represented, Peter Coyote turns to the raging Buddhist poet Gary Snyder for inspiration; Jane Fonda digs on Rilke; John Lithgow on Keats and Yeats; Carrie Fisher finds her inspiration in ee cummings and Phillip Larkin;
Kyra Sedgwick enjoys Shel Silverstein and Jocelyn Wright; Philip Seymour Hoffmann is a fan of Meghan O’Rourke and Eugene O’Neill; Daryl Hannah finds inspiration in Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars and Pablo Neruda; Diane Wiest admires Sylvia Plath and Ezra Pound.
“And Mary-Louise Parker surprises us by choosing Kenneth Koch and Mark Strand,” notes Rudd.
As Mary-Louise Parker explains in the book about Koch: “’To You’ is one of the first poems I fell in love with. My heart rarely stops when I meet another person, but a poem or two has knocked me on my back…I love the giddiness of it, the way it sort of trips over itself with such unabashed enthusiasm and sweetness. It's told so unselfconsciously but with enormous skill and wit."
Rudd notes that a new biography of Dave the Slave, “Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave,” by Leonard Todd, is due out from W.W. Norton on October 20.
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