If Keats had written in a diner, it might have looked something like this.
Rescuing Your Orphans
A (revisable) checklist for revising poems
by Ruth Goring
In the last year or so I’ve been dumpster-diving in my poetry file, opening poems written years ago and spiffing up some of them to submit to journals and contests. Some have proceeded to win publication and prizes–but they could never have done it without the spiffing-up.
What do I look for when I’m revising a poem, whether I wrote it recently or years back? The other day I had fun scribbling down a list of the revision tasks I assign myself and the questions I ask of each poem.
* Highlight every abstract word (e.g., beauty, failure, hopelessness, love). Unless your work is highly philosophical (and mine isn’t), translate these terms into concrete sensory images.
Exception: An abstract word planted in an unexpected slot amid sensory images may be very startling and fresh.
* How many senses is the poem engaging? See if a smell or texture can be added somewhere.
* Are there clichés or other phrases that slide too readily into a brain-groove? Recently I wrote a poem about riding a mule in the midst of a tropical rainstorm. I pictured the sky as a dramatic diva who “dumps barrels of tears.” When I workshopped the poem, a couple of people noted that this phrase was a little too familiar. Grateful for their sharp eye, I later had fun plundering my online thesaurus to construct a more interesting phrase. I ended up with “upends great tanks of tears,” which not only is fresher but has some soundplay with the repeated n’s and t’s.
Another option is to stand a cliché on its head–make it literal or stick it somewhere it doesn’t “belong.”
* Are the verbs pungent and vivid? In the same mule poem, another poet friend pointed out that “becomes” was static and insipid (though she didn’t use that pejorative word) in a stanza filled with strong active verbs. I replaced it with “slumps into” and the stanza took on a bit of extra shine.
In a different poem, where the moon had been “tossing / its bright coins against my mirror,” I switched to a different participle: “the moon stops me, flicking / its bright coins against my mirror.” Just a little more evocative, isn’t it? Some who voted for this poem in a contest quoted those lines as favorites, and it won!
* Adverbs: Eliminate most or all.
* Adjectives: Unless your style (overall or in this particular poem) is breathlessly florid and your adjectives unusual, pare them down judiciously. Try to transfer content to verbs as much as possible. For example, you might change “His jacket was slick” to “Rain slicked his jacket.” Much cooler.
* Sounds: Where can you increase alliteration, slant rhyme, assonance, and other soundplay?
* Meter: Read the poem aloud: does it have an emerging rhythm? (Obviously I’m working in free verse here.) Is meter giving your words the appropriate weight? For example, two monosyllabic stressed words placed next to each other have great force.
* Line breaks: Where do you want the reader to pause or stop fully? Where do you want to create tension and pull her forward? Are you using enjambment, dropped lines, and end stops to full effect?
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If you prose writers see anything useful here for your own revision process, please help yourselves–after all, we poets may be in the minority at this writer-friendly table. Are there any tasks/questions I should add to my list?
Comment below to share your wisdom, please. And hurray for thoughtful, adventurous wordsmithing!
Thanks for your invitation to non-poetry writers, Ruth–I definitely do some of this in my fiction, and picked up some interesting ideas from your article. Thanks!
By: Peg McCarthy on 02/23/2010
at 3:25 pm
Peg, so glad to hear these were helpful.
Maybe one of these days one of you fiction writers can make up a similar checklist & post it too. That would be fun to read.
By: RuthG on 02/23/2010
at 7:28 pm
Great post!
When I’m revising poems, I look for places where I’ve spent more time talking about one thing than that thing really warrants. I also look for places where I’ve got a couple of images or metaphors piled up, and one is weaker than the other…I take out the weaker one and it gives the good one more emphasis.
By: Bryn on 02/24/2010
at 6:28 am
Oh, good additions. Sometimes metaphors do get muddy & jumbled!
By: RuthG on 02/25/2010
at 11:26 am
I’m looking forward to applying these ideas to both my poems and my prose. I’m going to print them out and post them in my studio.
How wonderful to have a concise set of goals in mind when going in to rewrite rather than a vague sense that “I’m going to make this better.”
Thanks for these!
By: Sally Charette on 02/25/2010
at 1:04 pm
I am very happy at the thought of encouraging your own thoughtful writing practice with a posted list, Sally!
You’re most welcome.
By: RuthG on 02/25/2010
at 7:38 pm
Thank you so much for your revision strategies. Some might think writing poetry is a far remove from the writing of my freshman technical writing students, but your post puts the lie to this. Nearly all your strategies – slashing adverbs, limiting adjectives, replacing the abstract with the concrete and sensual, finding provocative verbs, reading aloud to find rhythms – are the strategies I urge on my students. The successful ones follow them.
Occasionally, one of the more perceptive young students writes a mechanism description or an extended definition that is pleasing to the ear. Your strategies, excellent for revising poetry, can turn even hum-drum documents into works of style, grace and – dare I say it – adventure.
I’ll send my students to your post. Can’t hurt. I’d love to read a formal analytical report with the cadence and spirit of an epic….Ray
By: Ray Turner on 03/04/2010
at 11:31 am
Ray, I will be THRILLED if some of these revision strategies help even one of your students make his or her technical writing more beautiful. Thanks!
By: RuthG on 03/05/2010
at 9:19 am
I don’t often write poems but I certainly have poets in my various writing classes so this is a very useful post which I’ll pass on and also keep for myself.
By: Ruth Kozak on 03/09/2010
at 10:48 am