Ways to revise a poem

Hints for my Brandeis Students....


1. Read your poem backwards (last line first, first line last) and see how it changes your poem. Sometimes this can be surprisingly helpful as it makes you look at your lines and the progression of your poem differently.

2. Change your pronouns. If you have a poem written in the first person (me/I), change it to second person (you) or third person (he/she/they).

3. Change your verb tense. If it's written in past tense (I walked) try present (I walk) or future (I will walk)

4. Change the lengths of your lines-- make them shorter or longer. Play with the word you break the line on, can you make it stronger? For example if your line is “listening to him I wanted to kill time playing hang man”- Which is more dramatic/interesting:

Listening to time I wanted to kill time
playing hangman

OR

Listening to him I wanted to kill
time playing hang
man

5. Read your poem out loud. (You can do this when no one else is around). Are there parts that are harder to say out loud than others? See if you can make them flow better.

6. Identify and dispose of any cliches you have in your poem. Cliches are phrases that everyone knows and uses when they need any easy way to describe things- “fits like a glove,” “white as snow,” “every color of the rainbow” etc.

7. Avoid vague images... you're looking at a red oak or a willow or a cyprus not a tree.

8. Focus on the imagery in your poem. Use all of the senses- sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to explore your images. Can you find a more original image for what you're trying to express?

9. Try to avoid using abstract words- love, justice, hate, loneliness etc. Instead, use concrete words and images that you can experience (be specific). Instead of “he looked sad” – you can't literally see sadness, “he stared at the rotting strawberries in the last of our garden” This is a terrible, terrible example and I know you can come up with something better, but it gives you the general idea of how to use an image to convey an emotion.

10. What can you cut without damaging your poem? This can be the hardest part but also the most important. Identify the center of your poem (the main idea or emotion you're trying to get across), cut anything out of your poem that doesn't directly contribute to emphasizing this point. No matter how pretty or awesome it is, if it's not helping to push the poem forward, it has to go. The good news is that you can always save it and use it for a different poem.



Hopefully these suggestions can help you get started. The last one that can really be the most helpful is to ask someone else to read your poem and then have them identify suggestions 5-10 — sometimes you just need someone to read it who isn't quite as in love with it as you are.


Any other poets who may still occasionally read this blog...feel free to contribute your own advice

The man speaks the truth

[The Sad Thing About Life Is]

The sad thing about life is
that I need money to write poetry
and if I am a good poet
nobody will care how I got it
and if I am a bad poet
nobody will know how I got it

-Frank O'Hara

Oulipo Poems

My Brandeis students wrote me some awesome poems last week about everything from bubblicious bubble gum to zombies, blue lobsters and bad dreams.

I am so stoked for class tomorrow.

Activities Update

Things I am reading right now: Frank O'Hara, Frank O'Hara, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Frank O'Hara, Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Things I am writing right now: sonnets, self aware not-sonnets.

Things I am not writing right now: an essay about Frank O'Hara and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Relaunch?

Last night I had a dream that Britney Spears was being heralded as the future of American poetry.

What I'm Reading

Recently/Currently:

The Sonnets, Ted Berrigan
The Collected Poems, Robert Creeley
Louise in Love, Mary Jo Bang
Lunch Poems, Frank O'Hara
Octopus #10, lots of poets

About to begin:
The Promise of Glass, Michael Palmer

Will the euphoria ever wear off?

And I've been listening to a lot of Regina Spektor/Juno Soundtrack/Three Dog Night. Specifically Never Been to Spain (it's been running obsessively in my head).

I might also be obsessed with writing Sonnets (even though they turn out badly).

Creation

So I finished the chapbook I promised Mathias last semester. I keep looking at it in awe of myself. It's totally not a big deal and Mathias is the only person with a copy, but I made something. I made something and I put it out into the world. I get it now. I always said I wasn't that interested in publishing, but I get it now.

Kind of like how new parents seem to spend a lot of time staring at red, not terribly attractive infants completely in awe of this thing they've created. I'm sure my awe will wear off once it starts screaming thru the night and throws up on me a couple times.

I want this.

how I occupy my time

Since Charles asked very nicely (out of concern for Bret's feelings), here is a post.

Lately I've been reading nonfiction, pretty much this and this.

Now, I'm reading this, which seems like a book one ought to have read by now.

And I've been watching a lot of movies. Like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. I've watched other movies too.

And I've not written or revised a damn thing. But I'm toying with a screen play mainly so I can orchestrate the music and camera shots. I'm just a little bit inspired by Diablo Cody, but her dialogue is a little too styled and over the top.

I think thats about it for now.

Well. That'll teach me to attempt to bake when I should have been writing papers.
Poor beignets, you would have been so delicious.

So something like 11 years after it's original release, I finally watched Grosse Pointe Blank. I think I might be just a little more enamored with John Cusack than I was before.
Movie rating: brilliant.

I read half a book last night. And another book the night before. Neither of which were worth admitting to. I figure it's like stretching before you run the race? In the near future I think I'm going to step it up a level with some John Irving. If that goes well, maybe I'll increase the weight to something literary like Camus or Sontag or Dubus III.

books.

I finished a novel last night. It's the first novel that I've read in months. I was ecstatically disappointed by the book, but the act of reading in itself felt genuinely good. Maybe I'll start reading books again. Books were, after all, my first love.

I want to be a poet like this.