Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Rhetoric and Eloquence [3]
This fineness in details is an imperative need for your poetry; you 
have too often a false note (rhetorical) or a just adequate expression – every turn, all the minutiae must be fine if the whole is to be exquisite. Otherwise even a fine poem can miss its effect by the inequality of its movement – as a fine dance can be spoilt by even two or three false steps or stumbles. A few changes here and there in a poem, slight in themselves, can make all the difference between a tolerable and a perfect whole – as a touch or two with the brush can transform a picture.
4 September 1931