Every work of art is an "act of faith" in the vernacular sense of being a venture into the unknown. The artist must dive into waters whose depths are unplumbed, and trust that he or she will neither be swallowed up or come crashing against a cement surface four foot down, but will rise and be bouyed upon them. Every work of art, even if long premeditated, enters a stage of improvisation as soon as the artist moves from thinking about it to beginning to form its concrete reality.

-Denise Levertov, "Work that Enfaiths" (1990)