Everything, no matter how lowly, carries aesthetic spirits. Poetic perception is a discipline of opening to an object's illumination. The poet serves as its speaker, as an intermediary and angel of its expression. When poets function angelically, the self is effaced as it becomes an invisible carrier, finely attuned to the object of contemplation. Poets carry the spirits of things to readers. . . . The poet similarly draws inspiration from the expressive qualities of the thing and its relations with its surroundings.
— Shaun McNiff, Earth Angels