For the young writer I think there is an urgency to create work. There were times I knew a rewrite was necessary and I did them. There were no doubt times I didn't, yet should not be satisfied. I suppose it is a part of maturing as a writer that we learn not to be in such a rush. Awkward as it may be, I am learning this. This is an especially difficult lesson for one to learn when they did not start writing till later years and feel their life rushing along before their very eyes.
I did a survey of readers on my blog as to how many times on the average they would rewrite a poem. The results are of course not representative of a scientifically controlled survey, and the response was not near as many as I would have liked, so we are dealing with a very small universe.
The Question was this: On the average, how many revisions do you do of poems you write?
The results are as follows:
- 3 or less 14%
- 4-10 57%
- 11-25 14%
- 26-50 14%
- more than 50 0%
I suppose it should not surprise me that the biggest response came in the 4-10 range. At first thought I would have placed myself in that category based on nothing more than a perhaps less than educated guess. But as I pulled out a few drafts of things I've written more recently, I decided that I really am more likely in the 11-25 range on an average, but closer to 11 then the higher end of the range. I've had a few like one titled Night Wishes that came almost spontaneously and as I recall tweaked I think two words in it from the original draft. Things like this however are rare.
I know people who firmly believe the first thought on paper is the best and don't like to make changes because of the belief that something subliminal has lead them to write a great truth. I find subliminal influence on writing very interesting but I don't subscribe to any notion that there is something sacred about the first thoughts to reach the page.
I have marveled at the assertion by Donald Hall that he has rewritten poems hundreds of times. The poem White Apples about his father's death took him 17 years to write.
I think there is a comfort level that must come only with maturity in writing that allows you to slow yourself down a bit and really look for the right words in the right places in your poems. One of the benefits of getting work accepted in various venues and waiting for them to come out is that it has allowed me not to be in such a hurry to get something new to send out. In fact of my last four accepted poems, two have been older ones that have hung around a while.
More rewrites are not always going to make a better poem but I think some level of rethinking is always critical. In fact I now like to put a poem that I feel is finished back and revisit again a week later. Sometimes what sounded good a week ago leaves you thinking what you might have been drinking when you stopped and put it aside. I have taken the rewrite process to an extreme and found that I was getting further from what I wanted, not closer. There is obviously nothing magical about the number of drafts but I think a willingness to try new language or approach is critical to growing as a poet. Sometimes shaking up the poem by reversing the beginning and the end, or rewriting a first person into another viewpoint.
If I am having trouble getting started with new stuff, I find that it is sometimes go back to old journals and pull out something unfinished, or really rough and work on it from a new perspective.
I've got more to say on the topic but I don't want to unload it all tonight. Besides, I'm interested in other perspectives on the value of revision and the process others use.
4 comments:
In one of my favorite essays, "Polonius's Advice to Young Poets", Hall wrote:
3. Revise everything you write over and over again.
(...before you publish the damned thing see that you know what you have done. In retrospect, intend every word and every piece of grammar.)
4. Do not show anyone the draft of a new poem until you have read it over, all by yourself, every day for six months.
(Do not show it to your husband, to your wife, to your roommate, to your student, to your teacher, to your friend's spouse, to your spouse's friend, to Alice Quinn or Joseph Parisi, to your Workshop Director, or to me.)
5. Do not publish a poem in a magazine until three years after you have first shown it to someone. Keep looking at it, and change it whenever you find something to change...
(Some old poets said ten years; some said five. But the world has accelerated, as everyone knows.)
It's that last sentence that made me begin laughing aloud. :) I'm not quoting Hall because I think he's an Expert. I like Hall because he says what I've secretly thought all along and just never had the guts to say. Poems almost always improve with revision. Those that don't usually were pretty bad to start out with anyway. There are exceptions, yes, but they're few and far between. Usually when someone tells me they don't rewrite because their work comes to them fully-formed from inspiration, I start making polite, frightened noises and edging toward the door. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't revise considerably whose poetry is little more than tripe, to put it tactfully.
That said, more revision doesn't unfailingly equal better poems, no. At some point you're going to get the thing as good as you can get it at that point in your life. Which is why sitting on poems for a lengthy time before sending them out is a workable strategy. The you of a year from now is going to be a better writer (hopefully) than the you of today. Why not give him/her a chance at helping you edit the thing?
As for the subliminal business, that will carry on throughout revisions. The subconscious (or underconsciousness, as I think of it) doesn't just show up, make a grand sweeping statement and then go back to napping. It's at work all the time, all the way through the revision process, too. Trust it and let it play in revision.
A comment entirely too long. I'm excited about the topic, and I like what you're saying, and like you, there's more I'd like to respond with, but will give it (and you!) a rest for now. Keep "unload"ing. I'll be checking back.
Cindy: I appreciate you thoughts. I suppose I see value in all of those recommendations by Hall, but what I find the most difficult is to show the work to no one. I suppose I am able to do this to a point, but the things that I believe have more promise usually end up getting shared. It's a downfall of mine. Someone slap me!
Oh, don't apologise! I think a poet has to be open-minded enough to try different approaches and wise enough to recognize what really works well for himself at the same time. It's a balance, isn't it? One whose fulcrum is in constant flux.
Do you usually share a first draft, and by first draft, I mean, exactly as it first comes out on the page? Or do you usually tweak it first? And when you share it, is it because you're prematurely excited about the piece, or because you've been working with it a bit and have gotten to a point of plateau and are ready for a bit of input and possibility? I think those questions are important, too. I probably don't always wait six months before showing it to anyone, either. Weeks, almost always, and usually several months, yes, but not always six. It all depends on the poem, for me. A few Great Scott (my first reader) has seen within a few days, if the Muse is especially hot and editing is smoking. Others are years old, and he hasn't seen them yet. :)
Ok. Here's a question for you. In what state of mind do you usually find yourself when you're sending out a poem for feedback? Excited because it's sounding good to you? Befuddled because it's not coming together? Satisfied that it's stable, but looking for confirmation and last minute things you may have missed? Just curious to know if the thing makes sense to anyone else?
Also, how many people do you workshop poems with, and when you share a piece with them, what kind of feedback are you usually looking for?
(Not asking for judgmental purposes at all, but happy curiosity. I don't know what intrigues me most, poetry itself or the creative process.)
Ah, good questions. It has usually been tweaked before I would share it with anyone. And to that point I have to feel like it is basically doing what I'd like to achieve, but still not likely a final draft.
Sadly, I would say that I used to share it more out of premature excitement. That is not really the case any more. These days I want brutal honesty. I know some writers find such honesty hard to take.
I have some members of a local poetry chapter I will on occasion send to. There are maybe six to eight people total. I have found that I really don't get a lot of critical viewpoint from most of them anymore. It is more like, "That was nice" or "that worked for me." While I can appreciate in this busy age that they took time to read the poem, I'd be more interested in what the poem did for them. Were they bewildered, or impassioned, excited, bored? What where lines they really liked as well as lines they didn't care for.
I will show some to my wife and occasionally two of my daughters. My wife will often give me constructive response. On occasion she will however not like something that is a key part of the poem, without which there is nothing, a non-negotiable item so to speak. She is not happy when this happens. Cath is not particularly drawn to my more abstract work and that is totally understandable. Some people just don't find that such poetry works well for them.
A couple years back I did a poetry post card exchange with another poet and we would send each other one poem a week on the same day. I was recently thinking about seeing if anyone wanted to do this same undertaking in October, but I am now hesitant to as a consider my whole creative process.
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