In message <[log in to unmask]>
, K.M. Sutherland <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Something I've pondered or at least wished to for a while is this word
>"precise", its frequency among positive descriptions of poetry.
Historically I suppose it goes back to Pound in his imagist/Fenollosa
phase - & at least there you see what he's aiming at, the pinning down
in the fewest possible words of whatever, as against a then current
verbosity deriving out of Swinburne - although some nineties poets had
their own 'precisions' & in any case in defence of Swinburne one could
say that he wasn't after any such thing. Perhaps for some such reason
it's gradually come to seem to me less & less useful as a general
criterion. (But I think in any case that Robert was applying it to CO's
study rather than an approach to poetry at large.)
I like this idea of 'wishing to ponder'. How's that done? Me I'm so
limited, I just ponder or I don't. Best, A
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