In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
Interpretation
Writing can be a meditative and reflective practice, akin to prayer.
In this quote, Denise Levertov suggests that the act of writing can express deep emotions, thoughts, and connections to the divine, much like the way prayer serves as a means of communicating and seeking solace or understanding. Both writing and prayer involve introspection and the pursuit of meaning, highlighting the spiritual dimension that art can embody.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of creativity, one might quote this to emphasize writing as a spiritual practice.
I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of death, the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")
Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -
But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud.
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.
An absolute_x000D_ patience._x000D_ Trees stand_x000D_ up to their knees in_x000D_ fog. The fog_x000D_ slowly flows_x000D_ uphill._x000D_ White_x000D_ cobwebs, the grass _x000D_ leaning where deer _x000D_ have looked for apples._x000D_ The woods_x000D_ from brook to where_x000D_ the top of the hill looks_x000D_ over the fog, send up_x000D_ not one bird._x000D_ So absolute, it is_x000D_ no other than_x000D_ happiness itself, a breathing_x000D_ too quiet to hear.
Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.
The essential elements of singing are voice, musicianship, and story. It is the rare artist that has all three in abundance.
Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.
My whole life has been a twenty years struggle between poetry and prose, or, if you like to call it so, Music and Law.
I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.
Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.
Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
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