Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,_x000D_ Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam_x000D_ And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.
Interpretation
The quote celebrates the beauty and simplicity of everyday tasks, elevating them to art.
Richard Wilbur's quote highlights the transformative power of mundane activities, such as doing laundry, by portraying them as moments of joy and beauty. It suggests that even the most ordinary tasks can be filled with grace and can connect us to something divine when approached with mindfulness and appreciation.
In practice
In a speech about finding beauty in everyday life.
It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.
I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.
The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.
It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.
Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.
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