News at Eleven: [David] Jones was a fine and original essayist

and in those collected in Epoch and Artist and The Dying Gaul, he outlined his view of the artist as 'maker', stating that we are the only creatures that create 'gratutious' works, for the sheer pleasure of the act, which Jones said showed our resemblance to the creator God. And he argued for the transcendent nature of what the artist makes: "Unless man is of his essential nature a poet, one who makes things that are the signs of something, then the central act of the Christian religion is without meaning."

from Galway Advertiser: David Jones: The Poet as 'Maker'

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