I hate revising.
The revision process is, by far, my least favorite part of writing a poem. An analogy I would use is walking my dog. I'm enjoying myself, walking along, enjoying the fresh air. Then, my dog starts to go #2 and I know there's an unpleasant task in the immediate future. That's what revising is: picking up the poop in my poem. While I know it's necessary, it's always a pain, and sometimes if I forgot to bring poop bags, I just fake it. In this poem, I felt really good while I was writing it. I suffered very little writer's block, and I was able to make it a stream-of-consciousness type of thing while still picking each word carefully and making it flow.
When I got the first feedback from Mr. Allen, most of it made sense and, after the revisions, I noticed a small improvement in the poem. Even though I struggled through the revision process, I could see the positive results. However, when I got the second feedback, I had a very hard time keeping the feel and essence of my original poem while still applying as many of the suggestions as I could. I don't know why, but amid all the "more imagery" and "more specific", I had lost my original poem. I guess that's okay if the original wasn't that great, but I thought it was one of the best poems I've ever written. That's not saying much, but for me, it was a very good poem. After my final revisions, I looked back at the previous draft and realized that I liked it better than the new one. When I wrote the first poem, I was following my instincts and setting down actual feelings. In the third draft, it was Thesaurus Time.
I realize that this poem degradation is mostly my own fault, but I still think it would be a better idea (at least for me) to keep revision to a minimum, at least for poems. I understand that essays need to be revised several times to be the best they can be, but I think that it's a whole different story with poems. Next time, I hope that I can do a better job of revising, but I think the problem could be avoided entirely if there was simply less revision.
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4 comments:
"That's what revisions are: picking up the poop in my poem."
Honestly, Brandon, i don't think anyone could have said it better than you have. It's tedious, it's frustrating, and it also involves alot of overspent thinking. So you're right, it's a pain in butt.
Still, what I've noticed about the revision process is that there's really no clear formula for it. It may just be a touch-up here or there.
So, in any case, this leads up to one of the biggest, most dauting questions of all time: "Where the hell do i start??"
When you mentioned the "stream of conciousness" that you experienced, i couldn't help but think "How did he do that?"- so that is my question to you. How does one overcome writer's block? Is it just confidence, or perhaps something else that im missing? Either way, i'm beginning to think that I need to take a "brain laxative".
As for the poem degradation you mentioned, I believe the key to solving that is a balance of ideas. Revision, in fact, is just like anything else: It needs to be done in moderation. Too little revising basically leaves you with the same original rough draft, and too much revision turns it into something you can't even recognize.
For an analogy, I think revising poetry is just like a delicate surgical operation. You have to make just the right cuts- hopefully without killing the patient.
Brandon,
I tend to agree with you that revision can be annoying and end up ruining a work once thought of as your own. But I really do think that Mr. Allen's edits are meant to help us portray our emotions to our reader in the most effective way possible. Even if we think that our poem makes sense, to the reader who doesn't know very much about us, it could make little sense at all. That's what I found with my poem, and so Mr. Allen helped me to clarify the poem. The ultimate goal of this, as I see it, is to make our natural instincts and stream-of-consciousness writing more effective.
Having said that, however, I still see your point that poetry, a very personal and artistic form of writing, should be left to interpretation by the individual. And if Mr. Allen tells us to do certain things, that may just be making our poems more like his poems. So then our next teacher or editor might want something totally different, more along the lines of their poems. Something so stylistic can be hard to tamper with without eliminating the style.
I suppose the goal is to still be able to revise for things that don't make sense without taking too much out of the poem that it is no longer your own.
Best of luck,
Daniel
haha i liked your analogy and I agree with you. But like you said it's still necessary so might as well get used to it.
I know how you feel about revising; it is a long and tedious project. However, I think that most of the time, at least for me, I generally find errors or miswrote sentences that I would not have noticed if I had not been revising my work.
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