Jeff Crandall discusses his poem "The Glassblower" on Beloit Poetry Journal's blog:

“The Glassblower” was written during my first summer working as an administrative staff person at Pilchuck Glass School. As a poet thrust into this creative furnace of artistry, I was struck by two things: how the fragility, clarity/opacity, and malleability of glass serve in so many ways as metaphors for the human condition; and how extremely sexual the language of glassblowing is: gloryhole, lip wrap, bench blow, etc. I was told by artist Pike Powers that this vernacular arose from carnival terms, “gloryhole” being the peephole through which one could see erotic acts.