C. K. (Cynthia) Homire has lived and worked in New Mexico since 1964--first as a potter in Santa Fe, then as a poet in Taos. In the early 1950s, she studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where a legendary community of painters, potters, poets, dancers, musicians, writers, and others were reinventing the arts in America.

For a short time in the middle of the twentieth century a small town in North Carolina became a hub of American cultural production. The town was Black Mountain and the reason was Black Mountain College. Founded in 1933, the school was a reaction to the more traditional schools of the time. At its core was the assumption that a strong liberal and fine arts education must happen simultaneously inside and outside the classroom. Combining communal living with an informal class structure, Black Mountain created an environment conducive to the interdisciplinary work that was to revolutionize the arts and sciences of its time.

Once there...students and faculty alike realized that Black Mountain College was one of the few schools sincerely dedicated to educational and artistic experimentation....

Black Mountain...existed on its own terms, and...succeeded in expanding the possibilities of American education.

-- PBS, American Masters

Perhaps it was the sense that she, too, has existed on her own terms that first drew me to Cynthia Homire.  Recently, I had the chance to design a booklet of her poetry with Virginia Foster in Guilford. Entitled Insights & Outbursts, I was simply delighted by Cynthia's words...and her spirit!

"Yes, I have rubbed shoulders with the pantheon, a few bellies too," she says. "Washed the floor Merce Cunningham danced on, then went leaping through his class. Jitterbugged with Rauschenberg, pointed out morels to John Cage, was instructed by Olson in long night classes to write from my roots, dirt and all, but take time out to dig up a few Mayans in Mexico. Shared steak with William Carlos Williams (he said "I know you"). Cooked a Chinese meal for Eliot Porter and David Brower (before David took to chewing each bite thirty times before swallowing). Breakfast with Brautigan. All these things happen if you are there for them and then maybe you make pots for 30 years and then maybe you write poetry."

It is with immense pleasure, and Cynthia's permission, that I share some of her work with you here on Creative Soup: INSIGHTS & OUTBURSTS.

Jen Payne
Editor, Creative Soup

[Please see News & Notes for information on the exhibition The Shape of Imagination: Women of Black Mountain College.]