Re-seeing,
systemizing revision.
A friend and university professor invited me to speak at his creative writing class. Afterward he observed about his students— that they were always trying to work symbols and themes into their poems. He’d want them to explore craft or mechanics. They continually returned to the work’s more abstract elements.
I wondered if it had to do with the way poetry is taught. I remember having to name themes in a given work, to bring attention to the symbols and motifs. I had to identify the writer’s tone.
Especially in terms of a poem, I don’t remember being taught to watch for where the line broke. Or to think about how a poem’s lines don’t go all the way to the right margin. To ask myself why the poet chose to end the line where they did.
This came to me much later, when I was hoping to complete my own poems.
Many of the questions I ask while writing a poem are not the same questions I was taught to ask in order to comprehend a poem.
When I revise, I write more like a programmer. I go through specific chains of command to rework and revise. I’m not sure this will be helpful to others, but it has helped my work and my young students. This is not the way to understand, or sense, and especially feel a poem. But it’s a useful system to discover hidden places in the work which are unknown to you while writing.
How does your poem look on the page? Why did you break your lines where you did? What words do you want to emphasize? What rhythms and sounds are in your poem? How can changing the line call attention to those rhythms and sounds?
Perspective. Pronouns. Is the poem in the first, second or third person? What happens when you change the the pronouns?
Opposite. If your poem makes an argument, can you make the opposite argument instead? (This is very useful if you want to employ irony. For instance, a love poem called “against love” etc.)
Favorite line/ best line. Sometimes I take the absolute best line and cut all the others. The best line then becomes the standard for all the rest of the lines. Maybe it will be the same poem, maybe it won’t.
Repetition. Where can you repeat a line or word?