Where Poetry Intersects Precision

"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." - Mark Twain

In my interview last year on Poetic Lines with Elizabeth Lund, I commented on how one element of poetry that most appeals to me is its precision. This comment has created some interesting discussion, especially among my technologist friends, as the definition of precise seems to argue against the condition of poetry - good poetry, at least - which creates opportunity for the reader to insert their own experience and develop their own interpretation.


That confusion seems reasonable, when you know the definition of precise is the state of "being just that and no other", to be "definite or exact in statement, as a person." But one can be precise in certain elements without being rigidly defined in others or from all points of view. Consider the Mona Lisa, in many ways a precise portrait of a woman, yet filled with elements that encourage speculation ("Who is she?" Is she smiling?" Why that background?" Did she have eyebrows?"). How about the pointillist paintings of George Seurat, which at the smallest detail are precise elements of color but which at a slight distance back combine to appear to the eye as other colors, and a little further back become characters in a scene, and which a few steps back from that are a complex snapshot open to the art of the storyteller (Sunday in the Park with George, anyone?)


How is that precision lends itself to interpretation and exploration? Precision in detail creates a vividness that frees the reader or viewer to focus their attention on something larger. This also requires precision in execution, precision in specifics without pushiness in purpose. Poetry instructors will steer students toward concreteness in word selection (precision!) and focus on images - creating in language the same situation that a viewer could have in front of a great painting. All the best guidance I've received in my progression as a writer has been to set the scene up, then step away without telling people what I see in it. It took several encounters with editors telling me they wanted my poems - minus the last two lines - for me to get that. Leave the interpretation to the reader.


Precision in art is a sign of craft, like Seurat's dots and DaVinci's brushstrokes. I find it always something to strive for, no matter what I'm writing about, and I think it shows in which poems last and which don't.