The Revision Game
I’ve gotten to a place where I can look at the poems I wrote earlier this year with fresh eyes. I realized it was time when I read the poems and didn’t immediately think they were awesome, or poignant, or find myself skimming to the end. When I get to the point where I look at the poem and say, “hmmm, no one will get that,” and “ew, that’s too abstract,” and “this poem doesn’t match with that one,” I know that it’s time to dig my heels in and revise.
At different points in my writing life, I’ve had a very different revision process. And I’ve never really chosen my process, or defined it as a “strategy,” but just let it happen. I used to do a lot of journaling, raw lines with no line breaks, lots of extra crap, and then would carefully craft the poem from the pieces, with little consideration for revision after they were typed; I finished them while typing them. Then there are times I get to, like now, when I write poems in line breaks, often typing directly in the computer, but then have to spend a lot more time later on revision, which seems harder when I see those lines already a certain length, already in stanzas, already with a certain voice. It takes a lot of effort, and a lot longer, to break out of that established voice. I often have to read other poets to see the spaces between the language in my own poems. In this way, I’m a thief, even if I never use an image I read or a convention I see.
But that’s where I am now, especially with this series of poems I wrote earlier this year. They are too “inside” and too abstract, and inconsistent in direction. So now I tear them down to build them back up, if I can bear it. I was in a pretty intense space when I wrote them, and I can’t totally rewrite them since I’m not in that space anymore. I’m not typically so attached that I can’t tear down a poem, but it usually takes time to get distant enough after writing it for the voice to feel new and strange again. I think it’s finally happened, so out comes the pen (no, not red). It took years (maybe three) for me to get to that point with my first manuscript, Giving Back the Girl. Someday soon I may revisit that one, since it echoes, in a naive way, this new manuscript.
In other news, I found out I was a finalist for one of the “first and second book” contests I entered this spring. This makes me very happy, even if it’s like being nominated but not winning. There’s hope to find a home for this book!