Recently I mentioned exercises–how some poems read to me like exercises.

Then I took another look at some of the sequences I’ve been working on for the past year–and (gasp) they look like exercises. Fun puzzles to write and piece together, but missing something (or a lot of things?).

So I’m doing the tear down–not the whole new house. When I revise poems, I don’t rewrite the whole thing. Perhaps I should, but I’m approaching this more like a remodel. Gutting parts, framing where I need a new room. Maybe even the remodel where  everything is torn down except for one wall.

I’m trying to balance what’s at stake in each section with what’s at stake across the poem as a whole (honestly, I think that might have been what was lost in all the fun puzzling). And that means figuring out what’s at stake.

I try not to know too much about it when I’m writing a poem, so I can avoid pounding the poem into an expected direction. But now I’m thinking that at some point I need at least a clue, a cornerstone.

So I go have breakfast with my dad and go grocery shopping with my husband and letter a chalkboard for his winery tasting room that was opening today and come home and clean all the bathrooms and mop the floor and find out that my son already did the vacuuming (thank you, Daniel!) and yell at the cat and pick some of the baby kale in my Italian garden and yell at the cat some more and fold a load of laundry and I think now I’m ready to try again. Or to make some stuffed mushrooms.

How do you figure out what you don’t know–and how do you know when you see it (or don’t see it)?

What do you look for in a poem–yours or others?

Last night, our poetry group met. I took a couple of poems, and one of them fell flat—completely flat. It was a really good opportunity to take a close, detached look and try to see why.

The feedback from my fellow poets centered on the last two stanzas, but I think that the problem starts much earlier. The poem is recapping a story, and there are undertones of personal experience, but they aren’t revealed at all, and so the emotional investment on the page is low.

Does every poem have to be emotional? Would that make them all the same?

I don’t know, but I do now believe that every poem has to risk something. That belief was reinforced at last weekend’s LitFuse workshop.

At the workshop, I also realized that revision isn’t just editing or tweaking or even moving things around. A couple of people referred to it as Re-Vision, which sounded perfectly sane and also daunting to me. Then I realized that revision is really just writing. It’s the work of writing, just as much as free writing or the euphoria of scrawling out that first inspired draft. It’s iterative, a constant starting over, an act of discovery and an act of letting go.

I admit that I’m lazy, or eager to be done, to have something finished. I don’t like to start over. But I think that if I can approach it as more writing—approach that first draft as a bundle of notes and clues—I’ll be able to go further in my poems.

How do you approach revision? Do you have a checklist? Do you have a set of rules or steps? Do you start over every time, or do you prefer to treat the first draft as a scaffold on which you build? Do you dread or revel in it?

Kathleen Flenniken asked this question at one of her LitFuse sessions. At the time, I said, “Yes.”

I’m having second thoughts.

As an editor, I like tightening text and playing with words. It’s the line-editing aspect. I’m not so good at being a developmental editor, recasting and rethinking and shifting around and trying things from a totally new perspective. I chalk it up to laziness.

In my current project, I realized that the minute I started editing, I stopped writing. I no longer created new work. I didn’t have ideas for new work. I didn’t receive that rush and pull to put something down. Euphoria gone.

I needed to start the revisions so that I would have samples to send in with a proposal (the deadline is Friday), but now I’m trying to figure out how to flip the switch again and get back into writing mode.

How about you? Are you a happy reviser?

That’s me.

As much as I want to write my best poems, I also have a strong desire to be done. Okay, that one’s ready! Maybe I stop too soon. Maybe I need to explore more, dig a little deeper.

Over the weekend, I had an idea about how to expand an older poem that has been on my list to overhaul. Here is the original poem:

Agnes Rose

It shares the name of my grandmother
and blooms with the same delicate sensibility,
softly fragrant, pale yellow—

the color of morning
or a woman’s dress as she walks onto the porch,
braces against the omniscient wind.

Maybe she raises a hand against early glare,
gazes across the rows of potatoes and peas,
the gnarled apple tree grown ancient so soon,

and she steps down toward the path
that curves under dark firs
to the sheltered scarf of her own rose garden,

My shrubs grow rangy, riddled with blackspot
except for this stoic rugosa that proffers both roses
and the woman who rests in memory, in earth, in her name.

I was thinking about how the need to do everything perfectly can sometimes serve as a deterrent to doing anything at all. My grandmother, who had a degree in home economics, was like that. The burden of perfection weighed on her. I came up with this revision:

Agnes Rose

It shares the name of my grandmother
and blooms with the same delicate sensibility,
softly fragrant, the pale yellow

of morning or a woman’s dress
as she walks onto the back porch,
braces against the reckless wind.

Maybe she raises a hand against early glare,
gazes across the rows of potatoes and peas,
the gnarled apple tree grown ancient so soon,

and she steps down toward the path
that curves under dark firs
to the sheltered scarf of her own rose garden.

Agnes planted hybrid teas, showy blossoms
as bright as egg yolks. But the chicken coop
sat empty, and her cooking days were done.

She knew the full measure of perfection,
how everything must end up just so.
until it wasn’t worth the trouble,

We can just sit and visit, she said,
although she let me deadhead the lilacs
and sometimes the columbine,

and we drove down the hill
to Vicki’s Café. Her pans kept clean,
her stove shiny and white.

My own kitchen is a ruckus,
and the garden is riddled with weeds.
My shrubs grow rangy, shot with blackspot

except for this stoic rugosa
that offers both roses
and memory, the woman who rests
in earth, in her name.

I wanted to say, “Done!” and “Yea! Maybe this will work!” But it doesn’t seem finished. And maybe it makes my grandmother sound lazy, which was not my point.

So now I’m thinking of another rose poem that’s been on my list to revise. Maybe I need to somehow combine it with this one—a mashup? (Is that the right word now?)

Here is that other poem:

Rose Surgery

Disease blackens tender foliage ears,
erupts in clusters on green leaves,
runs rampant through the beds.

In dazzling blue May,
I take up the expected instruments,
cut my losses with worn blades.

By leaf and limb, I operate,
pare old growth back to clean margins—
bone, cane, any green wood.

With each calculated clip, the shrubs grow smaller.
I should have pruned more vigorously
in the early year—cut hard when I had the chance.

No pardon for the delicate.
I sacrifice most of a rose to save the rest,
that what’s left may fade or flourish.

Will they fit? Now I’m having a hard time seeing how. Or is it just an idea in this poem that I need to find and use? I have my work cut out for me.

(SORRY!)

Do you ever piece together old poems?

How do you know when you aren’t done? A gut feeling? Some process that works for you?