William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl

I found a copy of Stafford's "Writing the Australian Crawl" in the Chemeketa Regional Library Service  and picked it up at McMinnville Public Library .

William Stafford

The chapter titled Writing opens with the lines,

It is a whisper, You turn somewhere
hall, street, some great event: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits -  but
there is a whisper.  You always live so
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moments touch.   

Stafford's view of artists and art is "the care of artists is not central to the care of art.  The accumulation of art objects is peripheral to the activity of art, in any area."

Art is in what we do and how we live and how we respond to the world not in the objects that accumulate around us.

One of his concluding points could be considered an almost spiritual  relationship to Art. 

Arts has its sacramental aspect. The source of art's power is one with religion's:  the discovery of the essential self and the cultivation of it thought the act of its positive impulses.

It rings true to me.  Art is what you do, how you interact and how you are in the world.