In my last post, I talked about Zoom classes, about advice (or lack thereof) that I have offered to MFA students. I decided to add a part 2 because I avoided the topic of revision. It’s my least favorite subject. Of course, students always ask if I revise and how and . . .
I wish I didn’t have to revise. I am unspeakably envious of poets like Frank O’Hara, who was famous for not revising. Of A. R. Ammons [pictured, left] who could write a poem like “City Limits” in one sitting. Of Max Jacob who composed in a notebook while walking through Paris and wrote: “The ideas I found in this way seemed sacred to me and I didn't change a comma. I believe that prose which comes directly from meditation is a prose which has the form of the brain and which it is forbidden to touch.” (From an interview with John Ashbery in the Paris Review)
Alas. I revise and revise up to the last minute before a poem or book is published, and then I keep on revising. As to advice?
I like George Saunders’ advice: Also found here
And Jane Hirshfield’s list.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a brilliant teacher and poet, teaches a systematic approach to revision in which one examines every part of speech in a poem.
One of my favorite teachers, Sydney Lea, said “that if he writes 13 drafts of a poem, he often ends up going back to the 11th.”
If only I had just 13 drafts to deal with. I might write 60 drafts and need to go back to the 20th. Sometimes an entire poem is lost when I can’t find my way back to the moment before I killed it.
Gregory Orr once told me my poems were like flowers that had lost their stems and leaves and sometimes their petals. They were, he remarked, kind of bald.
An early draft is like an overdressed woman. I slowly remove layer after layer of her clothes. By draft 15, she is naked. Then I open her further—it’s sort of like opening a Russian doll. I want the inner woman. The one the others (who are just shells after all) are huddled on top of, protecting her secrets. But there’s always a risk of taking off too many layers and ending up with that little wooden bowling pin at the center—a faceless, colorless, genderless alien. The bald thing Gregory Orr beheld.
In the end, I agree with Paul Vaery who said, “a poem is never finished, it is only abandoned.”
There comes a time when abandonment of one’s work is a relief. Even a cause for celebration. A time when Gaylord Brewer’s advice comes in handy.
Advice on Burning Manuscripts
by Gaylord Brewer
A simple charcoal grill for a simple task works best, rickety and self-assembled. Bear in mind a manuscript of even moderate ambition makes a dense sheaf, so an igniting fluid will be necessary. Set beloved pages gently onto the grate, douse liberally, and touch each corner with a struck match. Take your time. No urgency is required, no violence beyond the awaking flame itself. A ritual of release, not revenge. The intimate, irremediable act. Sip your beverage of choice and squint through coruscating fumes as the autumn night descends. (It is of course October, month of regret, reflection, and sorcery.)
As top pages, transmogrified, curl into the twilight like black moths, and a simmering, steady heat caresses the body of work, cover with the lid. Your part is done. Trust fire now to bring the words to their inarguable conclusion.
In my twenties I burned a novel and witnessed its conflagration. The Death of Auguste Rodin. Indeed. Days later, I followed with my entire folder of short stories. Fourteen. No carbons, no files, no discs, no jump drives. Students tend to stare incredulously when I sometimes conjure those sweet moments. No exhilaration, no fervor, certainly no regret. Just a settling calm, the confidence of a right thing, as ragged tissues of ghosts silently rose in the chill of evening. Embers, aglow on their grave, sputtering a few last, spent words.
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