Hello All,
The Blue Morpho submitted this excellent review and I wanted to share it with the writing community. It's great for anyone interested in the process of revision/editing/rewriting.
Check out The Blue Morpho's blog at Anxiety Land for stories about living with anxiety disorders, phobias, and OCD. And some truly enjoyable writing.
Book Review: "Poem, Revised" Edited by Robert Hartwell Fiske and Laura Cherry. Review by The Blue Morpho.
This book unreservedly gets five out of five wings from your
Adventure Hostess. (Put five small flutter wings here)
I find the process of editing poems to be the most challenging
part of creating poetry. There are always interesting subjects
and plenty of interesting words and phrases to be had. But for
me, trimming and tightening a poem down to the most effective
essence is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the
practice and work of poetry really come into play.
To that end, I purchased the book "Poem, Revised" that was
published in September of 2007. I had been looking for a book
on revising poetry that had real life examples. I wanted to
know how other poets approached this gnarly problem, and how
they triumphed. I got that and vastly more in this informative
and even inspirational book.
What You'll Find in the Book
"Poem, Revised" includes 54 poems by 54 different modern poets.
Along with each poem previous drafts are presented, with
poets providing essays on why they made the choices they made
to edit the poem, and what motivated each new draft. The poems
cover a huge range of styles from narrative, to lyric,
through to more concrete poetry. The book is hefty for a
paperback--192 dense pages. It is a long read, but if you like
poetry, it is worth the investment of time to get this unique
look inside the brains and working lives of several dozen
active published poets of our time. And more, it is worth the
read because I have no doubt it will provide ideas and energy
for any poet when approaching the process of revision.
What I Liked
Basically everything. I was looking for a book that would tell me
"how to edit a poem." What I got was the perhaps the best possible
answer, which is "all poets approach this process differently."
Simply put, there is no one right way to edit a poem. However,
there were themes that echoed through the book, making their
importance known through sheer repetition and through demonstrable
success in creating better poetry.
Poets strove for incisive, expressive images. Poets attempted to
eliminate words that either did not push their meaning forward,
or did not seem to "feel right'" or fit the poem. Some poets did
this deliberately, while others floated around until they felt
it had "come together." Certainly all the poets included in the
volume are in the habit of making multiple drafts of poems, and all
believe that the craft of poetry takes time and effort to produce
consistent results. Anyone can get lucky, as Susanna Rich
notes of her poem "The Buck." This poem was published in almost
its first draft; but the author says that since it had not
gone through an editing process, there were many "missed
opportunities." Instead, most of the poems presented in the book
went through a minimum of ten drafts, and some more than thirty,
before the author was reasonably certain the poem was as strong as
it was going to be.
Poem Centered/Author Centered Approach to Revision
Poets seemed to approach editing as either "poem centered"
or "author centered," and poets could vary from one point of view
to the other as they pushed through the editing process. "Poem
centered" was shown by the author saying things like "the poem
wanted to be this" and "the poem was leading me in a certain direction."
"Author centered" editing was in evidence through statements like, "I
wanted the poem to do this" and "I needed the poem to change so that ..."
Neither point of view is better than the other, and this difference
is not specifically called out in the book. It is my own observation
of what is written. I think it is important because both points of
view motivate how a poem changes/is changed as editing moves forward.
Some poets edit because what they want to say isn't coming through.
Other poets edit because the poem "forces" them to do so; they don't
feel comfortable where the poem is, and will change it until they get
a sort of "right" feeling. And one poet can do both, back and forth,
while editing.
No Hard and Fast Rules for Revision
Being the way I am, I was sort of hoping for a formula for editing,
even knowing that there was no such thing. Instead, I found relief
in the obvious fact that all authors edit according to their own
muse and their own style. Some are very systematic, noting first
changes in language, images, tropes, then moving on to meter and
rhyme, if called for, and then examining stanza and line length with
a wrap up on the poem's last few lines (the dismount). Other poets
approach editing with a gut level or instinctual reaction, looking
first at whatever seems most demanding of attention. They try
experiments, using rhyme and then abandoning it, pulling one line
to create anew poem, then abandoning that poem in favor of another
new line, etc.
The book really shines where it gives the actual examples of previous
drafts. Sometimes these are simply older versions. Other times
they are the honest-to-gosh photocopies of the authors' notebooks or
writing journals. For many, the editing process is messy, with notes
jammed into margins and new ideas springing from the smallest
observations. In one case the poet was making sketches in her notebook
of what she would later use as focused imagery. I found these, all
of them, to be gems. A chance to really see what poets were doing,
rather than have it interpreted for me.
What I Didn't Like
Almost nothing. I have a few minor issues that were insufficient
to knock my rating down. One issue is that some of the
reproductions of poets' notes are not of good enough quality to
read, or they have the text reprinted too small. Another small
gripe is that the poems are not organized in any specific way that
I can penetrate. The editors might have chosen to order the poems
by poetic style, or even revision strategy. I cannot find a
reason to the order in which they are presented.
Recommendation
I recommend this book for anyone with more than a passing interest
in reading poetry, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants
to write their own poetry. It might be slow going for a beginner,
but worth the time to plow through. For intermediate to advanced
poets, I think the read will be enlightening and entertaining, both.
And, if nothing else, this book presents 54 poems in a unique
anthology that includes each author's own ideas and motivations for
their work.
Your Hostess With Neuroses
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