Being economical with words

I started writing this post because I ran across a really interesting post in Seth Grodin's blog about using few words to convey an idea. Mr. Grodin started as a marketer but his work has covered a lot of topics, such as web design and company identity. In any event, I was going to start this post with a comment about how poetry uses words economically, so I began searching for definitions of poetry and discovered that lo! here is a topic where different sources don't really agree on the definition. "...language where rhythm is an essential part of the communicative act" is one approach, but how about "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience" or "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"? I am curious why there is not more consensus on this definition, but I also find it ironic that poetry tends to use carefully chosen words, often pretty economically, and the definitions for poetry are pretty wordy. But back to Mr. Grodin's point: the attention of one's readers is dear, so words should be carefully chosen to honor the value of the reader's attention.