Thursday, October 7, 2010

On Work, an idea.

Bill sent me an email yesterday saying he liked "The Last of the Season."  I admitted to kind of liking it too.  But, I told him, "Well, thanks, but it needs work."  That ignited a whole conversation, part of it about revising poems.  He was surprised to hear me say that a poem I posted wasn't complete.  Feeling like poetry is, by nature, organic.  And that maybe it should be so.  But I had to disagree.  I never stop changing my poems.  If I had them all in from of me today, it would be a real anomaly if one went unaltered upon reading.  Of course, once they go into "real print," I suppose you have to give up on changing them.  But I'm not there yet, so I have that onus and luxury, both. 

As much as I am in school studying literature, write poetry daily, post it here, write about writing poetry, and want to make my life of this, I don't fancy myself some all-knowing artist.  (Like most people, I spend 50% of my poetic time writing, and 25% revising, and 25% wondering if I'll ever feel like a "real poet.") 

Anyway, so that got me thinking about creating a poem line-by-line.  I wonder if there's a way we can try something here.  We could take a short poem, and publicly fancify/simplify/ossify it.  It could really help me (maybe others?) to workshop something, and see how other people might workshop the same thing.  And that way, we could all add what we have to offer.  Like, if you read it and think, this poem makes me think of ________.  We could find a way to add that.  Or this word doesn't flow/fit right/jive/is repeated.  Or I like this, but what does it mean?  How could we make the meanings more clear? 

Any thoughts?

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