Commonplace: "where the poetic and the prosaic share space" (Soetoro-Ng)

“

[SHE] WAS INTERESTED in the place where vision meets execution, and where the poetic and the prosaic share space. She loved the way something beautiful could speak about the spirit of both the maker and the owner; the skill and soul of the blacksmith are revealed in the keris, but so too is the desire and perspective of the buyer.

—Maya Soetoro-Ng, foreword to S. Ann Dunham, Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, ix-x,
as quoted in Janny Scott, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother (New York: Riverhead Books, 2011), p. 155

”