three-dimensional almost

At one point in The Orchards of Syon (XXIII) I say ‘I write / to astonish myself’. This self-astonishment is achieved when, by some process I can’t fathom, common words are moved, or move themselves, into clusters of meaning so intense that they seem to stand up from the page, three-dimensional almost.

—Geoffrey Hill, Don’t Ask Me What I Mean,
edited by Clare Brown and Don Paterson (Picador, 2003)

exotic & commonplace

Eliot was from the first a poet with a remarkable range of diction, and with a natural gift for the vividly memorable phrase. He was always consciously aware of the varied resources of English poetic diction and delighted to place an exotic word exactly, or to give us a sudden shock which the unexpected introduction of a commonplace word or phrase can provide.

—Helen Gardner, The Art of T.S. Eliot, E.P. Dutton & Co 1959