Revision:
to see again. The act of revising is probably
the most important, and at the same time,
the least utilized tool of beginning and
veteran poets alike. Nevertheless, that
second, third, or even fiftieth look at
the poem is at the very heart of becoming
a great poet. Poets as varied as T. S.
Eliot, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren,
and Mary Oliver are famous for producing
poems through the act of multiple revisions
(Oliver has said that she usually revises
through forty or fifty drafts of a poem
before she begins to feel comfortable
with it).
Whether the poem
was written without much effort, or whether
it was written through hours of long labor—it
doesn't matter. What matters is that you
understand that what is on the page is
an unfinished piece of work that now needs
your most conscious and honest appraisal.
For most of us,
the difficulty of revision lies in the
task of distancing ourselves from the
origins of the poem. Without some distance,
it is almost impossible for us to judge
whether we have given sufficient detail
to the elements that are needed to make
the work whole—our perspective is
too close to see all the details and how
they fit together. Imagine trying to decide
how good a painting is by standing six
inches from the canvas. Your limited perspective
would only allow you to make your judgments
based on a few technical details—for
an overall vision about the quality and
beauty of the poem, you'd have no idea.
It's the same for your poetry. You must
get some space between you and the poem
before you can see it clearly (with an
un-biased vision). You must learn to approach
it as a "new" reader.
There are several
ways of creating such space. The first
is to put aside the poem (literally walk
away from the work) after the initial
draft, and don't come back to it for at
least 24 hours. This kind of literal space/time
distance will allow you to gain some objectivity
that you may not have when you're in the
heated imaginative process of creation
(you may even want to wait a week or two—depending
on your own ability to approach the poem
as a new reader).
Below are a set of 10 questions for getting
inside the poem.
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1. Is the
poem confused or obscure in places?
2. Do the lines and stanzas have
solid logical relationships to one
another, and are the references
in the lines clear?
3. Is the tone of the speaker consistent
throughout the poem, or does it
arbitrarily switch or lose its attitude?
4. Are there unwarranted connotations
in the images or phrases that might
throw the reader and poem off track?
5. Is the poem so overloaded with
abstractions that the reader has
to supply his or her own stock responses,
and the poem has no like of its
own?
6. Does the poem contain clichés
that don't work in a new way?
7. Can you hear the rhythms in the
poem, or is it flat and lacking
in musicality so that it seems like
prose broken into lines?
8. Is its diction striking and fresh,
or drab and routine?
9. Are the verbs charged, or do
forms of the verb "to be"
predominate? Is the passive voice
used too much?
10. Does the poem say something
in a new way, or do you simply imagine
that it does?
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