my most reliable way to turn my body into a prayer

Poetry is, in my understanding, one of the most robust allies ever granted to humankind in our quest to find satisfactory language for the intangible. For many years now, and while claiming no specific religious affinity, I have thought of poetry in these terms: a resilient spiritual technology that helps me create links between embodied knowing and disembodied knowing...

I write through my body because it is an effective tool, yes. But to speak of my physical relationship to poetry as merely the outcome of good pedagogy would be to oversimplify, to lie. I write through my body because it is my most reliable way to turn my body into a prayer. It is the best language I can muster for brokering conversation between my human condition and my spiritual condition. Of course, the poems are imperfect. Of course, the years have piled onto my flesh with some harshness. I cannot always align my limbs to the demands of divine exercise, but at their best the poems are medicine. They convince me that healing is possible, and they are the natural technology I offer whenever I am preparing myself to say things I hope God, or the angels, or the ancestors can hear.

- Brandon Wint, from his "Notes on Writing" essay "Divine Animal: Writing Through the Body & Toward Healing" for Event Magazine (Winter 2021/22).