On Being Verbose

I have been thinking about my own writing for the last few days. Going back to some of them, reading through them, and I realized, I am quite, er, VERBOSE. My poems are long, my stories are long. So, if you are a believer in the maxim "saying less is more", then, probably, my writing is not for you. I tend to say a lot, through a lot. Part of it is just that I think, certain things tend to take up more space. Although it's not like I myself don't enjoy precision. But I like those long, rambling stories full of details a lot better. Especially when they work, especially when they let me see a setting, an environment, a character up down sideways. I think it takes a lot to delve into those details. Writing skills, observational skills, analytical skills. But I have also been thinking, is there a gender-divide in terms of our reception of the length of the work? Like, so much of the poetry criticism has praised Emily Dickinson for being brief and precise. I myself love Emily Dickinson, but it's not her precision which makes me love her. In fact, that aspect is secondary for me. She is doing a lot more in her poems than being merely brief, precise, and miserly with words. But does it de-stabilize us a little bit to imagine a Whitmanesque or Ginesbergian verbosity from a woman? Is that praise for precision also a desire to contain the women writers? Asking her not to take up too much space?