Culture | New verse
Cleansing and toning
What is poetry good for? The season's new work provides part of the answer
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EMILY DICKINSON, a 19th-century poet, thought that poets, at their best, “rinsed the language”. They made language anew by cleansing it of the accumulated crud of cliché, sloppiness and general woolliness.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Cleansing and toning”
From the July 23rd 2005 edition
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