Questions for poetry revision
Inauthenticity appears in the belief that one can attend a costume party disguised as one's self.
This is the thought I measure myself against when entering the room of revisions. When straddling the multiverse between poet and persona, or the mask adopted by the author that offers a public version of the author's self, a distorted version of that self, or a fictional character.
To some degree, persona protects you by creating a distance between the voice on the page and the person living a life, failing. Ideally, revision is where the interaction between persona and poet sharpens into voice. But it’s still gruesome and difficult for me, still the most disorienting part of process. I need prodding, prompting, and encouragement when it comes to paring down and deciding what I want from the poem—or what the poem wants from the world. And how. .
So I’m sharing a few questions I give myself in revising, followed by revision resources crafted by others.
Questions for the Poet
Does the metaphor carry its weight? Does it feel accidental or sloppy?
Have you followed your fascination like a monk into the soul's monstrosity?
Are you skimming a pretty surface?
Are you writing what haunts you, even if it makes you look bad?
Are you writing to look good? How is that interesting or relevant to others?
Do the words link arms like drunks on a city street, their song tangling, rising suddenly like an accident that absolves us of money for the damned?
Are you wearing a costume or taking one off?
Did you drop freedom fries on the floorboard and hope to get away with the untouched cliche?
Are you all-in on glibness? Why?
Does your anger at the world include your role in its sustenance?
Is your gaze ableist or boutique-hearted?
Does dependency seek to present itself as the poem's golden glove?
Why are you whispering?
Why are you shouting?
Where do you stand in relation to the stadium?
Are you writing in hopes of rousing or arousing the audience? (If your mind immediately grabbed to the sexual connotation of “arousing'“, that might be a separate thing worth poeming.)
Would the poem still matter if you walked past a magnificent mural that said the same thing?
Did you get what you wanted from the endnote? If so, did you brocade a complicated lie just to get there?
Is there a sequel?
Is there a statement when what you meant was less stable, more querulous, closer to the marvel of a question?
Are you subverting a form effectively? If so, why? If not, why are you clinging to the idea of form for this poem? At what point does changing the rules become a different game? What is the significance?
Did you remove an adverb because someone told you that good poems don’t have adverbs? Why did you believe them when so many poems you admire suffer from allegation of adverbing? If you are Catholic about adverbs, consider being a lapsed Catholic for the poem.
If the poem is a room, what is the background music? Is it distracting?
Is it a prose poem? What are you getting from its lineation? What is the poetic line in this poem—and why?
What makes it feel finished? It is connected to another poem? Is it the start of a series or something that stands alone?
Ultimately, I don’t believe in finished “products”—I believe in the process of poeming. Consumerism conditions us to think in terms of products, to write for a market, to manage expectations with an eye to sales. But the poem doesn’t give a damn about sales. The poem may be published in one form only to reappear in a collected works with different line breaks, syntax, white space.
The question of when a poem is “finished” is the most difficult question for me as both a writer and a reader. I think Danish poet and writer Inger Christensen lays the stakes out best with a simple question:
"Is it at all possible to learn to write poems in a way that will make them seem important to read out loud to a cockroach?"
I leave you with peace, love, life—and a few more wanton butterflies to chase down the road….
The Condition of Secrecy by Inger Christensen (New Directions Books)
“Trust Poetry: An interview with Ada Limon” (BOMB Magazine)
Nick Ripatrazone’s “In Praise of Poems That End With Questions” (The Millions)
Excerpt from Hadestown by Kim Triedman (Talking Writing)
“The Art of Negotiation” by Meghan Privitello (The Volta)