Currently I am still in the ‘put it all in’ mode and allow myself to mix styles, from academic discourse to imagistic poetry.

But that makes revising more difficult! What “works” is an intuitive appraisal since it’s not the kind of ‘poetry writing’ I was taught in workshops many years ago.

It has to feel as if different levels are being included and that not everything is neat and tidy, a little messy is important, something rather wild and unpruned.

Sometimes I edit to make it ill-fitting, awkward!

Thank you for this reminder on the importance of working at our writing – in this world of hitting “post” something that maybe we don’t do enough of.

I once read an article in ‘New Writer’ by someone like me who doesn’t really like to do free writes. Apparently it’s something to do with personality. I do, however, use them if I’m stuck. NaPoWriMo was great for me as it actually got me doing the hardest bit, which is starting to write. I’ve now got 30 poems to work on. For me the crafting is the essence of writing a poem.

I’ve only had two poems accepted for publication. (Sending them off is almost as difficult as starting to write them!) Both of these were written whilst doing an Open University creative writing course, and both were worked on extensively.

Great discussion!

very interesting piece on a subject most writers must confront again and again at various stages of their writing life. thanks for writing it. what you’ve helped me understand about my own process is that i rarely use the term “revision” to describe what i do. this could be why i don’t have that allergic reaction many writers have to the idea of revising. i would describe my process on most poems (there are always exceptions, of course) in this way:

i have an idea that feels like a poem, so i get out my notebook and begin writing. if all goes well (i have time to devote to it, and my “muse” is with me) it builds and builds to something i usually call a complete draft. if i’m not lucky, what i’ve written is the beginning of a draft, or even notes to begin drafting from later — those i have to come back to (muse willing) until i finally get to the complete draft stage. this complete draft is often messy looking, with lines crossed out, words added in the margins, and plans for fixing problems that aren’t written down but held in my head. then (sometimes immediately, sometimes later) i go to the computer and type it in. lots of changes occur in this typing-in process. lots of decisions about line lengths, stanza shapes, line breaks, word choice, new images, etc., etc., etc., get made in the course of getting the complete draft into a word processing file. sometimes i “type in” 2 or 3 versions to compare. often the title first emerges at this stage. in other words, it could take me anywhere from a half-hour to a half-day (or more, in some cases) to “type in” the poem. at this point, in fact, i have gone from thinking of it as a complete draft to thinking of it as a poem. at that point, i might close it and come back to it later, when i need to send a submission out, or if i’m super excited about it or frustrated with it i might send it to a trusted friend or two for feedback. but sooner or later, i come back to it and do what i call “tweaking” — a word which covers a wide range of potential changes! then at some point, i look at it and say to myself that it is “done.” as far as i can tell, “done” just means ready for submission to journals or to be read to an audience.

but the kicker is that, like others who’ve commented here, even poems that are “done” continue to get “tweaked,” even after they’ve been initially published. i don’t know that there’s a statute of limitations on how long the tweaking can continue — it’s really a function of whether i feel satisfied that i’ve gotten the poem to the very best place i can get it, without it becoming another poem… and what’s funny is that at no point am i “revising” — it’s all “writing” or “working on” the poem, in terms of how i think of it!

i always write too much in your comments box, january — a testament not just to my long-windedness, but also to the thoughtfulness and thought-provokingness of your blog entries!

peace,
evie

Keep those comments coming!

In my teens and twenties, I used to loathe revising and would rarely look at a poem again once it was on paper. When I became an editor in my late twenties, I loosened up a little and would maybe go over a poem once or twice.

Now, I really enjoy it. Sometimes I rewrite whole poems, sometimes I tweek a word here or there. Then I let it sit, then go again, sit, again, sit, again until I find contentment or feel defeated by the poem.

Defeat often leads to coming at the idea/image/thought again from a different angle. I never surrender.

I tend to revise a lot, doing what everyone is suggesting above, ie reading aloud, casting the poem in a different tense or voice or perspective, until it feels right, credible. Then it’s time to go to work on it.

The first draft (in my case) will usually have more than a few adjectives and adverbs to help capture a mood/moment more easily. The rewriting and revising help me to keep that mood/moment without adjectives/adverbs and without poetics. That’s the hard part for me: the striving not to sound poetic (which I think certainly kills the poem).

Brilliant article, Jan. And interesting comments.

i am reading now, the collected poems: sylvia plath. in the very first paragraph of the introduction, ted hughes writes, “to my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetric efforts. with one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair or even a toy. the end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity.”

neither jill nor i was sure if the description is intended as a pat on the back or a criticism of plath, but for certain both of us could relate to the truce it seems plath called with revision. “a successful poem” being one that had done its job for us in that moment. perhaps the only reason to revise is if a poem isn’t doing its job or if there’s an obvious place where it could be made more effective. otherwise, perhaps, chairs and toys are just as worthy as tables. there are bound to be all of them in our bodies of work.

I read a blog where the poet posted a “found” poem, a diary entry she had written twenty years ago, as a girl. I guess so much time had elapsed that she saw herself as a completely different writer. Interesting.

At some point we have to let our creations live a life of their own. We work on them, do all we can for them, but then we move on, just like we do with other aspects of our lives. I’d hate to be a writer who keeps pecking away at the same dog-eared manuscript.

I do rewrite as I write, though, and I won’t post it if it’s something I can’t stand.

I think that the writing process (including revision) is going to be different for every writer. The important thing is to find a process that works and make it your own. I like the suggestions you make for looking at a piece in revision, January.

Good article!
best,
lisa

I like the idea of building a better monster.

Thanks for your comments, Donald and Nathan.