The shortest distance between Missouri and California was across the central part of the country.

VOA: special.2009.05.28

In other words, replacing the shortest distance between two points that we experience in a practical message, "literariness," as the formalists call it, or "poetic language," as they also sometimes call it and as the New Critics certainly call it, slows us down.

也就是说，实用语言以最短的距离,联系两点，而文学性，如形式主义者所称，或诗意的语言，他们有时也会这么叫,新批评派成员一定会这么称呼，使我们的理解速度慢了下来。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选