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19 votes
19 votes
Which best explains how poets use compression?

A. They include sentences that tell the reader what their images
mean.
O B. They pare down to the most essential aspect of what is being
said.
C. They avoid writing about ideas with too much complexity or depth.
D. They describe their subjects from many different points of view.

Which best explains how poets use compression? A. They include sentences that tell-example-1
User Rpggio
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2 Answers

18 votes
18 votes

Answer: B) They pare down to the most essential aspect of what is being

said.

Explanation: When a writer begins to perceive that his need mocks his gear he has already begun the change from versifier to mature poet. In an early letter (1909), Wallace Stevens defines this combined limitation and necessity of the poetic device: In the "June Book" I made "breeze" rhyme with "trees," and have never forgiven myself. It is a correct rhyme, of course—but unpardonably "expected." Indeed, none of my rhymes are (most likely) true "instruments of music." The words to be rhymes should not only sound alike, but they should enrich and deepen and enlarge each other, like two harmonious notes. When the correct device is also the expected one and by definition outworn, the act of composition will bristle with difficulties, with unforgivable wrong choices. The device itself will be parodied, distorted, or avoided in such a way as to make its absence very remarkable. After the "June Book," Stevens tends to avoid end-of-line rhyme because he cannot invariably strike with it the true, unprecedented note. (One result: he becomes arguably the most skillful technician of blank verse since Milton.) During this same, early modernist moment we find Mayakovsky joking:

User FantasticFiasco
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21 votes
21 votes
B they late down to the most essential aspect of what is being /
User Eugene Tulika
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