A sequence of three poems, "Revenue Customs", pays tribute to "dexterous drafters / of sub-sections, pluggers of loopholes"; in "Retirement" he acknowledges, with characteristically ambiguous precision of phrasing, "I could nearly hold the place / in my affections".
The precision of the phrase startled her.
We used to have to use our memories or imaginations to appreciate the terrible precision of the phrase.
I knew Bernardine for more than 25 years, and the purity of her thought and the precision of her phrase-making, whether in conversation or in writing, were matchless.
While he was still in Cape Town, his taste moved from Hopkins and Keats and Shakespeare to Pope, "the cruel precision of his phrasing," and, even better because wilder, Swift; he feels "fully in accord" with Pound and Eliot's attempt to bring into English "the astringency of the French".
McCarthy's detractors criticise her for concentrating on the outward ephemera of her characters' lives rather than giving them psychological depth, but in The Group her ability to convey a personality with the precision of a single phrase is deployed to devastating effect.
With impeccable tuning, timing and precision of color and phrasing, the Sherry Quartet, four young players coached by the cellist Fred Sherry, shows the way through a labyrinth in which one essential melodic and harmonic idea is endlessly rediscovered in new forms.
His prose is full of vivid descriptions and turns of phrase that pop with a preternatural precision.
Recently Mr. Hutcherson has favored a tighter range of expression, focusing on melody and phrasing with the precision of a good singer.
