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| Plumber hero. |
Forgive me if I get a bit overly-technical here, but in the back of the tank, that windshield wiper-lever thingy would disconnect from the rubber plug, resulting in the water not being able to fill back up.
With the help of a piece of a wire hanger (and my hands in some freezing cold water in the back of the tank), I could reconnect it, and feel like I’d done some good work (I know, very self-congratulatory--but I’m not a very handy person).
When I think about revising poems, it doesn’t feel like demolition, nor does it feel like painting or repainting. The kind of revising I do feels like fixing plumbing (what I’d imagine it’s like, at least--what a strange fantasy!). I imagine myself sitting on the floor in front of a sink, both cabinet doors open, all the pipes exposed and leaking.
My changes to poems are always fairly minor (usually replacing or cutting individual words or lines, tightening a particular image, or playing with punctuation). And I don’t always know what I’m doing when I’m tinkering with a poem--I don’t know how I want it to turn out, I just know that there might be a trouble spot. If I fiddle too much with a particular poem, there’s a chance I might just let it be (which means....what? I guess that I don’t submit it anywhere or see it as more than an exercise).
For me, the trick is always to let the poem be what it wants to be. I can feel myself too carefully reprettying lines at times, and I have to work against that impulse. I also am on the lookout for places where jumps in logic seem to make perfect sense to me, but I can’t figure out why, and I’ve lost the connecting threads in revision (this happens in my titles sometimes).
I love hearing about other writers’ revision processes. I’ve known writers who rewrite an entire poem several times. Or writers who let poems sit, and return to them over a matter of years (I adore sifting through Brian Brodeur’s splendid site, How a Poem Happens--if you don’t know it yet, get yourself comfortable and wander through the extensive archives and enjoy).
So I’m curious. How do you revise? What images characterize how you revise your creative work?
Love your plumbing prowess, Hannah, both in poetry and otherwise. :) I also take the "tinker' approach and have found the sculptor metaphor apt... chipping away until the real thing emerges... happy day to you!
ReplyDeleteLove the NES image you chose to represent this.
ReplyDeletePersonally, my writing is something like gardening or farming. I have fields of poems in various stages of germination and I try to pay attention to which ones suddenly begin to sprout. Then I lavish more water and sunlight on them, in hopes that they might be able to bloom.
That might make the process of revision similar to pruning.
I let the poem or short bit of prose sit, like cake batter, so the flavors can settle and deepen for a bit. Then I dig out the bits of eggshell and dry batter that didn't blend well, stir again...and bake it.
ReplyDelete(I too love the Mario image! Brought back some very strong memories for me!)
Irene....love the sculpting idea. And happy holidays to you.
ReplyDeleteShawnte, Super Mario is wonderful :). I like your gardening idea...Brian Eno has a fantastic piece on "Composers as Gardeners"--http://edge.org/conversation/composers-as-gardeners
Chrissy, that eggshell image is strong for me.
I’m enjoying this thought-provoking end-of-year change of pace, Hannah. I read what you posted on Monday as being conscious about how, at a certain stage of development, after one stops worrying whether one is “doing it right” vis a vis the incestuously vast artistic/poetic tradition, one settles into an easy and comfortable skill that can create almost effortlessly, and how tempting it is to fall in love with that fatuous facility instead of the real work, which is being vulnerable and real enough to painfully expose one’s unique wound, which lifts the art away from just another egoic projection to something that joins one with the common.
ReplyDeleteToday, I think from your description of your revision process how poems really come out of a higher mathematics – they are about something that calls to be discovered. The mathematics that inspires a poem also shapes it like an engineering problem, and it’s hard work for the poet to literally put everything side to submit to such a taskmaster. If this seems an obvious point, it often becomes blurred for me when so many people talk about “technique” and compare the process of revision to “killing ones babies” and theorize and analyze endlessly about a process that is really about how to most directly capture a genuine human emotion. Some poems call for much sanding and lacquering, others must be raw. Some poems find their way to good homes, others are content to be orphans.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, but that’s part of the fun of the daily blog, isn’t it? I think what I’m trying to say is better expressed by (I believe) RL Greenfield, in a review of Charles Wright’s Littlefoot. The whole thing is great, but I’d like to quote one paragraph:
“Everywhere one reads in Littlefoot one is freed from the constraints of the commercial order and its false worship of phony means and ends that cling like leeches to individual citizens and would-be persons. However, this book does not sermonize or issue propaganda. It feels the world about it with its fingers and eyes and with its ears and its nose and mouth. It is amazed at what it feels or senses while imagining and transforming what it is sensing. And it disappears as it were before our eyes and ears–we who are watching, listening, thinking, remembering, and forgetting. This book disturbs our habitual methods of experiencing life breaking up our neat little monologues and our false epistemologies.”
i read it out loud over and over, editing as i go. if a place is particularly sticky, often it will stay in my head where i can repeat it until it tells me how to fix it. i play with about every imaginable configuration of line breaks. i ask it if its beginning is the right entry way. i ask it if its ending is satisfying. i ask it if the reader has too much or not enough to really get caught up in the poem. it's like a conversation, i guess ... with the page/screen.
ReplyDeletefor what it's worth, i talk to other seemingly inanimate objects, too, like my car. ;)
Bill, glad to hear you are enjoying my ramblings :). I love what you say about "higher mathematics" of poems....how they beg for the writer to discover them and puzzle over them. I think about the process of songwriting--it's finding the song, but also teaching it to ourselves....and what an amazing, insightful review you shared here. I don't know if there is any better compliment than a reader saying that a "book disturbs our habitual methods of experiencing life..." Thanks for sharing that!
ReplyDeleteCarolee, talking out loud to objects is a sign of genius, I'd say :). Revision and writing as conversation--that's interesting!
Bill, glad to hear you are enjoying my ramblings :). I love what you say about "higher mathematics" of poems....how they beg for the writer to discover them and puzzle over them. I think about the process of songwriting--it's finding the song, but also teaching it to ourselves....and what an amazing, insightful review you shared here. I don't know if there is any better compliment than a reader saying that a "book disturbs our habitual methods of experiencing life..." Thanks for sharing that!
ReplyDeleteCarolee, talking out loud to objects is a sign of genius, I'd say :). Revision and writing as conversation--that's interesting!
Love your plumbing analogy - I won't touch plumbing at my house, but I'm not afraid to tinker with poems. Many times I do what you do - once I have what I consider to be a viable draft, I manipulate word/line changes, cut, play with sound and line breaks. I often read them aloud to see where they are choppy or "off." Sometimes, though, if the poem isn't working, I just bring in the wrecking ball and completely smash it to see what's left when the dust clears.
ReplyDeleteA wrecking ball is sometimes called for, Donna :). Love your bravery!
ReplyDeleteI can't liken writing to any other process. I write until I think an idea has been adequately expressed, then make changes based on euphony. Sometimes I'll go back and read old stuff to see what crappiness I condoned, then fix it.
ReplyDeleteBecause I maintain my own blog, I get as many tries as I want. It's great.
Love your plumbing analogy, and this train of thought.
ReplyDeleteI do battle with my poems.
I find the editing process to be much more difficult than the writing, but essential.
I do a first draft, almost a prose outline in verse, to capture my thought, and what I want to say. This is the emotional part, but is 99% of the time nowhere near the finished poem.
I do a horrendous amount of research, checking out insect species, restaurant menus, for the poems, and am vicious with my editing - nothing is sacred if it doesn't lend itself to the final effect.
I play with line placements, change verse order. Sometimes I re-write the poem in free verse or sonnet or other forms, to see if it works better that way.
After this process - which could take anywhere from days to weeks - I let the poem simmer. When I return to it, the careful tweaking begins - rhythm, rhyme, essentially the musicality of the poem.
Finally, when the poem is able to make me angry, or laugh, or cry, at the right places - I release it into the world.
I can usually tell from the first draft if what's just happened on the page is going to be an exercise, or if it's going to be something to keep working.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I revise as I write. I work on the poem, and when I hit a spot I don't like, I get a fresh piece of paper and start rewriting the poem from scratch. Repeat until I have a piece I like. Usually, these poems need the least revision later.
And sometimes, I know I'm onto something, but need to let it sit. I go back and forth, dabbling here, dabbling there, and after 3 or 5 drafts (despite my penchant for even numbers, drafts come in 3s or 5s), I take it to my critique group and let them have a crack at it.