Renate Wood: Thoughts on Precision (July 1997)

In this lecture, poet Renate Wood considers precision in poetry, distinguishing it from clarity, and arguing that precision is produced through a sequence of exclusions that create the balance of opposing elements that comprise the tension of the poem. For her operative terms, she draws on the formulations of philosopher Susanne Langer, then, through close readings of poems by Ritsos, Rilke, Dickinson, Bishop, and James Wright, Wood considers how “elimination, if precise, creates illumination.”