Today (Friday) was poetry revision day.
Word Raccoon wasn’t wrong about it being intimidating to revise poetry after studying Dickinson.
Dickinson’s style is not my style. It’s gorgeous. There are traits of hers, particularly compression and concreteness, that I want to keep in mind, though.
So revision went…slowly today.
Want a peek at what I revised?
– Freewritten
Decided it’s a “notebook poem,” put it in a new folder I labeled as such.
Then I started revising a poem from this past summer, written a couple of weeks after my mother passed, and it showed. The revision became its own beast and so I kept them both, although I retitled the first. Those are:
– All Those Beautiful Rings
And
– Ring After Ring
They were shuttled over to my grief poems file. I am afraid to open that one and see just how many tiny fire bombs await all told.
Some day, when I’m feeling braver.
I opened one called “Go to Bed,” and almost immediately I knew it was song lyrics: “The house says no/but the soup says maybe.” It went into a new file, Song lyrics. Guess we’re collecting those on purpose now, too.
Though with purpose? I couldn’t say.
Then things got kinda weird.
“Splitting Geodes” moved from drafts to “Ready” without a change, although it’s still a strange little feller.
WR hisses and says she likes him.
Of course she does.
Then things went from weird to challenging. And not in a good way.
The poem started life some time ago as “Pugilist.” Which was an ironic title. Now its title is “Butter Bottom.” Which is evocative and not in the way I imagine some people think it is trying to be.
It mentions a purse I had as a child that I can’t seem to find any similar photos of online, so I had an image created for me. Maybe you remember these crocheted purses made from butter tubs?
The poem needed concreteness in the center section, and I was also withholding tenderness. WR said so.
I wrestled first with the title, felt better about the whole poem.
I whittled at that center section, gave up on it for a time, went to the poem’s end and played with it, found what it wanted to say. Then back to the middle.
I sat with it.
And sat.
I drank caffeine.
I ate my English muffin.
I people watched.
I made small talk.
I even watched cars go by.
Then I returned to that cursed middle. I just didn’t know what to do with it. And wouldn’t you know it, Word Raccoon was being distracted by the fresh chocolate chip cookies on the counter. She noticed the shimmer of salt on their tops.
When I told her she couldn’t have one until we finished revising the poem, she shoved my water off the table, creating a mess for the poor barista.
I insisted that WR should mop it up, but the barista said he would do it.
And this is why I usually ask for WR to have a sippy cup instead. She can’t be trusted.
At least the glass didn’t break.
Back to the poem, back to not knowing what image to give that middle.
I was tempted to delete the damn thing and pretend it had never existed.
Not an option. We do not weenie out on poems. If it’s fatally flawed, sure. This one isn’t.
I was so frustrated with it that I wanted someone, anyone else, to tell me what to do with it.
I contemplated asking the guy sitting in the window seat. I don’t even know him except he journals here sometimes and I think maybe we were introduced once.
But no.
I almost asked the musician/barista.
Also no.
This poem wasn’t ready to be touched yet; someone else touching it would have turned it to ash.
I reminded myself that this poem wanted to be, that I needed to stop supposing that it was hiding from me.
I was the one shrinking from it.
“We don’t do that,” WR declared. “We might keep it to ourselves when we finish it, but we don’t hide from the work. That’s not honest art.”
She sat beside me then, and eventually, we had a strong draft. Dare I say, I think it’s done.
At that point, I wanted to pack it in, but Word Raccoon growled and said she wanted to check out a few more poems. I agreed to it.
Having stayed with the tough one, the others opened more easily.
We revisited “On Tap,” tightened a couple of lines and sent it to the “Ready” file.
“Weird Eye Contact with the Soul” required cutting the first two (obvious) lines, adding a pronoun or two. Ready.
“Careful Men” needed an audacious ending, which WR happily supplied. Ready.
The last one we opened was “Flesh Flowers.” Seeing how much work it needs, we noped out and went home to make lunch. Which was fine, really.
But the title is so evocative, we definitely want to work on it sometime.
Also, we did actually add a slap of an ending onto it before we shut it, I guess. Well, that animal of mine did.
The reward is being back in the sun on the porch.
The neighbor’s cat is slinking its way over towards me, as if to say it’s missed the sun and me.
Me, too, cat. Me, too.
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