Writing is easy. It’s editing that's hard. While Jack Kerouac might have espoused the concept of “first thought, best thought,” Kerouac edited his own work. Poets need to play with their poems and approach them from different angles. A poem needs to breathe. It needs to sit in a drawer until the writer can be objective about it. Below are a few things to look for when that poem comes out of the drawer.
Show, Don’t Tell
To show, rather than tell, is a well-known caution for fiction writers. Long expository sequences are less engaging than a dramatized moment. Poets should also seek to show rather than tell. One way to do this is to avoid abstractions. As Ezra Pound advised, “Don’t use such an expression as ‘dim lands of peace.’ It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete.” He also issued the famous warning, “Go in fear of abstractions.”
While love is anything but meaningless, the word “love” has arguably become so. Poets need to transcend clichéd and stagnant expression. They do so by infusing the tangible - what William Carlos Williams would call “the twiggy stuff of bushes” - with deeper meaning.
Theodore Roethke could have written, “I both loved and feared by father.” But this language gives the reader nothing of substance to envision or relate to. Instead, Roethke's “My Papa’s Waltz,” conveys these conflicting emotions. The image of the son’s ear scraping a buckle, the presence of whiskey on the father’s breath and the drunken missteps in the “dance,” the utilization of words like “death,” “battered,” “beat,” along with the image of the frowning mother and the raw knuckle of the father suggest danger or even abuse.
When the boy clings to his father’s shirt, is it for fear of being dropped or because he doesn’t want to waltz to end? It’s left ambiguous, and intentionally so: it conveys the contradictory emotions, love and fear. Yet while fear and love are palpable in this poem, those words are never once used.
Mirror the Content With the Form
In the above example, the central image is of a father roughly waltzing with his son. Musically, a waltz is in triple meter, usually a 3/4 beat. The poem is written in four four-line stanzas, all in iambic trimeter - a triple meter. In other words, the “music” of the poem is a waltz, mirroring the central image.
The sound of the words themselves can also be so utilized. In Emily Dickinson’s “Snake,” there are numerous words with the “S” sound. In the first two stanzas, we have: grass, rides, sudden, is, divides, spotted, shaft, seen, closes, and opens. The poem literally hisses like a serpent when read aloud. Similarly, in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” WWI soldiers are suddenly faced with poison gas. Owen, like Dickinson, uses the “S” sound: ecstasy, clumsy, helmets, just, someone, still, was, stumbling, misty, and sea. These words sound like gas escaping canisters.
By making the meaning inseparable from the language or from the poem itself, it becomes something that cannot be expressed in any other medium.
Edit One Aspect at a Time
Each time a poet revises a poem, it might be helpful if he focuses on one particular aspect of the poem. One edit might focus on word choice. Is that adverb necessary, or can the same idea be better expressed by finding a stronger verb? What would replacing that word do to the music of the line?
Another scan of the poem might focus on form. Suppose the poem is about mirrors and how reflections can be distorted. Are heroic couplets the best way of presenting this idea? What would happen if it were instead a villanelle, where lines are repeated, suggesting mirror images?
Community and Networking
Poets should interact with other poets. Take part in poetry workshops, do readings, or find other means to get input from other poets. Sometimes poets have trouble cutting beloved lines, out of pride in their construction. Others are able to be merciless where the author cannot.
Most importantly, poets should read other poets. Others' poems present what is possibile. Benefit is gained even from bad poetry. When she reads a bad poem, the poet should ask herself why it's bad, and then look for similar weaknesses in her own work.
Final Warning: Know When To Stop
Beware of over-editing, however. The writer may never feel 100% happy with the end result, but should nevertheless recognize when a poem is as finished as it can be. When the editing process ceases to be one of discovery, it’s time to stop editing and move on, remembering the immortal words of Leonardo Da Vinci: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Matt Ferrara - Matt Ferrara is the author of the short story collection Young Drunks in Love and the poetry book Five Seeds Enclosed in a Capsule. In ...
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