Forum Revising Revising Poetry/Poems

Is it difficult for anybody else to revise a poem?
Often times instead of revising (which would mean changing a stanza, adding a line, dividing the parts) I end up writing an entirely different poem, but with either the same concept or theme.

I'm just wondering if other people walk away from poems once they've been written and start fresh with a new one, which may be relative to the old. I understand spellcheck and switching out a word for a better one, but does the editing go any further than this?

Its happened a couple times what i'll usually do is start the new poem and leave it alone then some time passes and return to the 2 and see about combining them.

I never edit my poems. I write them as if I was rapping a freestyle and leave them be afterwards. That way it is nothing but pure emotion and states exactly what I was feeling about the subject at that very moment.

...maybe thats not the smart way to do it?

[quote=Andy Capri]Is it difficult for anybody else to revise a poem?
Often times instead of revising (which would mean changing a stanza, adding a line, dividing the parts) I end up writing an entirely different poem, but with either the same concept or theme.

I'm just wondering if other people walk away from poems once they've been written and start fresh with a new one, which may be relative to the old. I understand spellcheck and switching out a word for a better one, but does the editing go any further than this?[/quote]

my gesture is to edit up to a week or so, it seems, and then call it complete or throw it out. in that week i can sometimes revise-edit 20 times, looking for the poem in the verse that i've rattled off. sometimes, the poem comes out in a piece, whole, with very little change necessary: finding the punctuation, finalizing how i want it to look as to spelling and line break. after it's complete, then i won't change it anymore. if, a year later, i read it as crap, then i'll throw it out of my collected. the problem with revising from a distance, is that you aren't the same person you were when you wrote it: poetry is getting into that exact plastic state of mood and word and sound and idea. the idea doesn't change... the idea in a poem is the least important thing... but the sound of it, the music that only you heard when you wrote, is gone; poetry and music are a mood of their own. the only thing to do with a crappy poem is write a new one. in any case, the next poem you write is always the best.

some chummers need to voice out only what they've got, because they haven't got very much, and have no craft. versers who write crap: the "me go into hunger" poems, know that they're already out of it when they write their verse, because they know they only want to write for dates, or to have the look, or justify not being a CPA. who cares if they can't re-write... their stuff's only good for a minute of reading; even the soul mates aren't going to thing about their writing for more than a minute: it's the game of being a "poet" that's the game, not the poem.

best, when we're young, to have a good genius friend who knows what you're doing and for whom you can write. then you always know you can write the next one and someone will care about it.

only write when you have to. that's why fourteen year old's, when they're reacting to bad friends, can sometimes write the most powerful poems... the rest of it, writing when you're 25, is poser if you haven't got anything more to say than "i'm as good as you".

I think that if a poem needs revision, you should revise it. I've seen so much work here where people say they just write from the heart and don't revise because it destroys the immediacy of the work. That's alright if you have no wish to improve your craft, but frankly, if you have no wish to improve, I have no wish to read your work, and I don't see why I should bother reviewing it.

That said, my poetry is usually very short, so reworking completely changes the piece. I do, however, spend a lot of time crafting each individual line, and it has usually been read by several people before I post it here. With my prose, however, nothing is ever truly finished. I constantly revise everything, and will probably continue to do so until I can get a publisher interested in it.

I think there isn't a right way or wrong way with regard to revisions. Sylvia Plath did not revise her poetry. She wrote a poem in one sitting and if she didn't like how it came out, threw it away. I am of multiple minds when it come to revisions. There are times when I write a poem and I know that it's not quite right yet. In those cases I will keep nibbling at it, making adjustments or sometimes big changes, until it feels right. Sometimes I like to let a poem sit and go back and look at it a while later, to see if I still like it. If I don't I might revise it or do a new version of it. I typically feel free anyway to change a word or two. Sometimes I've come across a missed typo months later. As for people who post poetry just from the heart and are not looking to revise it, it's just that such poetry serves a different purpose, to express what's better off not kept inside, rather than being controlled, molded, fired, kiln-dried, or otherwise changed into art. I do take comments in reviews seriously, but they are not always right. Sometimes what is objected to I did on purpose. Other times the suggestion is completely valid and I look to rework or reword something.

[quote=Andy Capri]Is it difficult for anybody else to revise a poem?
Often times instead of revising (which would mean changing a stanza, adding a line, dividing the parts) I end up writing an entirely different poem, but with either the same concept or theme.

I'm just wondering if other people walk away from poems once they've been written and start fresh with a new one, which may be relative to the old. I understand spellcheck and switching out a word for a better one, but does the editing go any further than this?[/quote]

It depends for me. If I just wrote a poem or story and I thought that a certain part needed to be edited, then it's easy to revise it because I still had the inspiriation at the time and it still fits in the poem without completely changing it. However, if I read over a poem again a couple months later and it didn't flow right, then of course it would be difficult to revise it. Because if I revised it way in the future, from a couple months later from a year, i couldn't revise it because the inspiration is long gone and plus it would probably change the emotion of it if I basically wrote it over.....

I edit my poems write then and there. But normally my poems come to me in my mind the way I want them, so there isn't much changing that I want to do. My "Video game" poem is an example. I wrote that for one of the contests on here in under 5 minutes. The description of the contest just made the idea for the poem spring into my head. I think I changed one word when I was done.
One of my biggest problems is sometimes I have an idea for a poem, but then when I go to write it. I come up with something totally different then what I was thinking. Then I loose the orignal idea.

i try not to change what i write - whatever comes naturally, you know? =]

[quote=David P. Eckert]Sylvia Plath did not revise her poetry. She wrote a poem in one sitting and if she didn't like how it came out, threw it away.[/quote]

She often felt great dissatisfaction with her work though...and ended up killing herself, so...

poetry is the most refined and precise of the writing arts, so those who think a11 a
'rea1' poet has to do is spew out whatever is in his/her head onto paper and that's it,
are sad1y mistaken-- it takes just as much work and care to craft a good poem as it does
for a good story or a song 1yric or anything e1se that's written-- the stuff wou1d-be poets
churn out without a bit of work/editing/po1ishing is considered 'doggere1' in the wor1d
of the 'professiona1' poet [or worse!]--

p1ath is not a good examp1e to use as a standard, since she was a very damaged young
woman who turned out stuff that came more from her tortured mind/1ife than from a
great ta1ent for writing-- study instead the true great poets throughout history who
[i]did [/i]work at the art-- editing and po1ishing and revising their work ti11 it was as
perfect as they cou1d get it--

The only hard part about revising my poems is feeling like I'm done.  You know that feeling deep in your heart that says "ok, I'm done".  The last 2 poems I wrote took me a week each.  I spent about 3 hours each day working on them.  It may have taken so long because I start by writing down lines I like relative to the subject of the poem.  Since they were both rhyming poems, I made a list on another piece of paper of the words I felt would be good for the end of each line.  Next I opened up my rhyming book, and made notes.  This not only helps me find if I need to change my decision on wording, or I may find a word or two that fit into my theme that give me a new line or a fix to another.  I also use a thesaurus. 

So revising for me is a very long process.  I only work on one poem at a time (short stories and novels are a different story).  I already think contantly about poems I'm working on, and before I know it my head is full of rhyming, lines are floating around, and I don't need that times two or three by working on multiple poems.  LOL

Like you, once I'm done revising, my poems are totally different than when I started them.  The theme is the same, the story I'm trying to tell is the same, I just go about it differently.  I guess I could say I just take a different path to the same goal. 

 

I hope that helps...?

 

Gwendolynne MoonCat