Agony and Epiphany: The Art of Revision

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Good morning! I hope you’ve been well. If you participated in NaPoWriMo, you might have upwards of 30 drafts of new poems. And, if you’re like me: some of them will never see the light of day, some of them were fun experiments, and some of them might actually be worthy of revising.

But then: revising sucks.

I mean, you know, it’s fun and exciting to see a poem reach your vision, and it can be a really rewarding experience. But that’s in between the moments of cluelessness that really, truly suck. For me, it’s a process of intense agony, grasping at epiphany.

Or maybe you’re one of those people who likes revising more than editing. If so, this newsletter is for you, too: I want to think through different ways of entering revision.

So, how do you actually revise a poem towards your particular vision for it?

Table of Contents

• The Goal of Revision

• Revising as Experimentation

• 20 Doorways Into Revising

• Each Poem Demands Its Own Process

• Other Pieces of Advice

• Go Forth and Experiment!

• Other News

The Goal of Revision

Depending on your personal constitution, this quote is either liberating or terrifying. For me, it’s a bit of both.

Obviously, the goal of revision is to make the poem “better.” More concretely, it’s to bring the poem closer to your vision for the work. All of this is rather ineffable, because the vision is the work itself, and the poem is the attempt and bringing the vision to life. If poetry is a summary of itself, then there’s no way to describe the vision outside of the poem, you just have to accomplish the vision through the poem.

All of this is both somewhat obvious and deeply abstract. But what’s missing is this: Revision is not a process of “fixing” or “improving” the work, but further discovering it.

I can only use examples from my own experiences writing and revising poetry, so don’t assume that I’m obsessed with myself as an artist. (I am, of course, obsessed with myself in other, equally unflattering ways.)

Often, I write a first draft of a poem in couplets or tercets. Not because I think the poem needs to be in those stanzas, but because it’s easiest for me to access the language I need. I like couplets and tercets for their abilities to generate tension through juxtaposition, and I can harness whatever useful accidents come from this, but it’s rare that a poem remains this way in revision.

Recently I was editing a poem where I felt I got the language right, but the form completely wrong. (It was in tercets. Womp womp.) It was only after reading the poem back to myself about 40 times that I realized the form needed to resemble what the language was saying about the queer body. The poem turned into a prose poem with slashes demarcating internal breaks, forcing the poem to be both linear and disjointed. To be determined if it’s any good.

On the language level, I often find I need to take out abstractions in my work—in my attempt to discover something true, I shoot for the moon and end up with lofty, inaccessible language: words attempting to be poetic, but not being poetry. It’s not that my work needs to be “simpler”—I’m obsessed with complexity—but that simpler language can often access more complex ideas.

Although revision is singular to each poem, I notice that my revision strategies require me to know my own brain, its limitations and tendencies, the walls it builds unconsciously between language and truth (to butcher an idea from Lacanian psychology). So, know that revision is something you get better at as you go, so long as you practice at it and pay close attention to yourself.

Revising as Experimentation

Being a poet is very similar to being a scientist.

If you’ll allow me the metaphor, both poets and scientists are asking questions and testing hypotheses. Scientists do this with beakers and telescopes. Poets experiment with words, sounds, and forms; through an incessant tinkering with language itself.

So, revision is simply a process of furthering a poem’s experiments in language. One way to think about a poem is that it’s an answer to a hypothesis. If the current answer is unsatisfying, tinker your way into a different one.

Poems interrogate our place in the world, our relationships to one another, our similarities and differences with nature, where we come from and where we’re going, our present moment, our human nature, our purpose, our traumas, our identities, our hopes. And this is true even of poems that don’t overtly ask questions. Take the short poem “Poem” by Langston Hughes:

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.

This simple, earnest poem doesn’t seem to ask anything. What is the hypothesis? What is being tested? Let’s step outside of that framework, and just consider what the poem accomplishes. In as few words as possible, and without even the use of imagery or metaphor, the poem conveys the pain, quiet and self-contained, of losing someone who made your world brighter.

Perhaps those are the questions the poet asked. How can I express what I feel plainly? Without image or artifice? How can I crystalize this pain into language?

Or, perhaps Hughes asked different questions, questions we don’t know, questions floating in his unconscious mind. But, certainly, a poem as beautiful and evocative as this one doesn’t arise without the poet seeking something deep, true, and hard-to-access in language.

20 Doorways Into Revising

So, if revision is just a process of tinkering and experimentation, here are some doorways into revision.

Take a poem you’d like to revise. Use the following questions and ideas as doorways into revising the poem. Try to follow these questions even if they don’t seem relevant. 

I would advise you to copy your draft into a new document and edit that one. You should create new documents for each set of revisions, or at least preserve different version of the poem in the same document, so that you can compare the poem in its different stages and see what works over time.

Ask yourself:

1. What discovery did I make in this poem? What am I still trying to discover?

2. How is the form of this poem enhancing its meaning or argument? What feels hindered by the form?

3. Which images feel the most vibrant or alive in the mind’s eye? Which are hardest to imagine?

4. Is the poem titled? Does the title merely summarize, or does it provide a unique window into the poem?

5. How is the poem shifting the reader’s perspective? Is it making something familiar seem new, or something new seem familiar?

6. What feeling do I want this poem to convey? Is it conveyed well and deeply?

7. What energies or entities does the poem invite into itself?

8. Does the poem feel alive? Is it its own organism? Is it in communion with other organisms?

9. Where is the poem’s tension? Is the poem exploring that tension, or shying away from it?

10. Does the poem journey into what has the most energy?

Now, it would be reductive to say that poems are arguments, but poems do say something, and the tools of rhetoric can be borrowed to further sculpt a poem—even poems that are more spiritual or mystical than argumentative.

So, consider the following:

1. What is the poem trying to say, now that it’s been drafted?

2. Has the poem grasped the full complexity of what it wants to say? Does it want to convey that complexity?

3. Where does the poem contradict itself? Do those contradictions broaden the complexity of the poem’s subject?

4. Does the poem resolve oppositions, or inflame them? Which do I want the poem to do?

5. How is this poem in conversation with the world I know?

Lastly, read your poem out loud to yourself. As you do, pay attention to the following:

1. Where did my mouth stumble over the words?

2. How did it feel to read a line break or stanza break? Was the pause natural or forced? If it was forced, did it highlight an important word or multiplicity?

3. Does the poem sound like the feeling it wants to convey?

4. What words stood out in my reading of the poem? Do I want those words to stand out? What moments of surprise are there in the poem’s language?

5. Where did I feel this reading of the poem in my body?

This last question is important because it can reveal some energetic quality of the poem. Often, revision is a way of writing towards that energy.

Again, remember that all of these questions are doorways. They aren’t leading you towards a certain way of writing poetry—don’t assume your poem has to be complex, musical, or rhetorical. Simply consider whether you want those qualities incorporated into your poem, and make decisions in revision that move the poem towards your vision.

Each Poem Demands Its Own Process

One of the hardest parts about revision is the individuality of each poem. I can’t offer blanket advice on the craft of your poem, because there is no blanket advice. To offer that, I would be imposing my aesthetics and poetics on your poetry, and, while I think I have amazing taste, my way of poetry is certainly not the only way.

To revise a poem, you have to listen to it. You have to treat each poem like its own sentient entity. A poem is a living organism. Okay, it doesn’t have organelles or synapses, and it’s stuck speaking with the words you give it—but it also has its own needs and wants, its own demands, it’s own unmet aspirations.

Artists of all stripes typically create from a state of flow—a deep-focused mindset wherein the artist is tinkering in their own private world, just the artist and the art. In my first drafts—and I think this is true for most poets—I often find elements of my unconscious mind peeking forth. When I surprise myself in my word choice or imagery, that’s when my ego has been restrained and I’ve been able to access something deeper and truer in my poem. Revision, then, is a means of working further into that depth.

Let me offer you two examples:

First, this blog post showcases the 16 drafts Elizabeth Bishop took to eventually write her poem “One Art”: http://bluedragonfly10.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/one-art-the-writing-of-loss-in-elizabeth-bishop%E2%80%99s-poetry/

Second, you might be interested in the book The Process of Poetry, which features the first and final drafts of award winning poems, plus interviews with the poets on their processes of revision: https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/the-process-of-poetry-edited-by-rosanna-mcglone

You’ll soon find that there’s no singular way to edit all poems, and no two poets have the same minds for revising, even if their styles and influences are the same. But being in conversation with your first draft will guide you towards something more final, and the more you tinker and experiment, the more you’ll achieve your vision.

A Note on Aesthetic Unity

I want to offer once last idea to guide your revision process, and that’s the goal of aesthetic unity.

What I mean by aesthetic unity is that each constituent part of the poem—every word, line, line break, stanza; every image, symbol, metaphor; the poem’s form, sound, feeling, and title—is working towards a bigger goal or message. When a poem achieves aesthetic unity, then the gestalt of the poem becomes greater than just the sum of its parts, and the work takes a step towards enlightenment.

When I critique or analyze poems, I’m often analyzing how those constituent parts are working towards something greater. For example, I recently published this analysis of Neil Shepard’s poem “Exiles”, which I think achieves something lofty by using syntax and linguistic tension to arrive at a sincere rumination on the ironies of life and aging.

The questions in this article serve to guide you towards your poem’s aesthetic unity, which will hopefully approximate your vision for the poem. Or, maybe your poem realizes a different vision, and your original vision is fodder for a different poem. That happens too.

Other Pieces of Advice

In no particular order, a brief assemblage of other pieces of advice I’ve collected over the years:

• Follow your own strangeness. Do not edit towards what will get published; edit towards the singularity of your own mind and vision. (That is so often the thing that gets published.)

• The editor’s hat is different than the writer’s hat. Try to only wear one hat at a time.

• It is best to edit a poem with some freshness of perspective. Sometimes it needs to sit for an hour. Sometimes it needs to sit for a year. Sometimes you need to be a completely different person. Scientists are in search of the right chronological formula, but are, as yet, stumped.

• Writing workshops are useful, but don’t over-privilege them. Use feedback merely as doorways into revision, and know that some doors are better left shut. Trust your instincts here.

• Sometimes, the only thing that remains of your first draft is a single word or phrase in the final draft.

• Do not delete old drafts of things. You never know when it will help to return to the (seemingly) in-between stages of a poem.

• Your first draft is almost never perfect. If, in the very off chance, you write a perfect first draft, buy yourself a lottery ticket that same day, and do not think about the numbers on your ticket any more than you thought about the words in your poem.

Go Forth and Experiment!

I hope the advice here helps you revise your poetry. If you ever want to share your first and final drafts of poems you revised, my inbox always loves more poems in it.

Other News

If you want to revisit any of my prompts from this year’s NaPoWriMo, you can find them on the (newly designed and still-in-process) Poemancer website here: https://poemancer.com/divinations/

I also have a number of exciting events coming up! Next month, I’m hosting a queer poetry scavenger hunt at Poets House in Lower Manhattan. The details are still TBD, though it’ll likely run on June 14th. I’ll have a more proper invitation for you in my next newsletter.

Also at Poets House, I’m putting together a course on monsters in poetry, likely to be run in October. More soon on that, too!

Finally, the Poemancer card game is still a ways away from being live, but we’re working hard on making it possible. If the prompts and craft essays have been helpful for your poetry, I’m confident Poemancer will help you, too.