Compression: Christina Murphy
“The poet Marianne Moore wrote that ‘compression is the first grace of style.’ Who am I to disagree with that? Or even to expand upon it—although I will. If you think compression is just making things smaller, tighter, more elliptical, you have missed the boat of meaning that should be sailing in your poem. If you think that it takes vision to express ideas in words that engage the reader’s imagination, then compression is a synthesis of insight and form that creates a powerful fictive universe via ‘the first grace of style.'” — Christina Murphy
