By Evan J
Photo by Evan J
Have you read “My Method, Part 1,” yet?
When I’m done with my handwritten brainstorming session, I copy these notes to the computer. This process is often more beneficial than the handwriting stage. I get new ideas, I see lines that better connect, I notice what lines are already useless, and I often start to see the shape of the poem. And I don’t shy away from acting on this knowledge. For me, this moment of creation is the sweet spot. It gets no better than this stage. It’s the time in life that I feel most like an artist.
I only end this stage when I have a decent-looking poem created. It can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 hours. It all depends on the poem’s purpose and if I feel I’ve achieved it.
Then I leave the poem alone. The longer the poem sits, the better. Aging a poem for one month is what tastes best to me. At one month, I’ve mostly forgotten how I wrote the poem. I’m far less emotionally tied to specific sections. I can better see what parts don’t work, and I can more easily remove them.
At this stage, I change from my artist pants to my professional poet pants. Meaning I’m no longer primarily looking to create, but instead, I’m looking at craft. I’m going through a list—a real checklist—and I’m assessing what is working and what is not. If something isn’t working, I change it, and then I return to the list. And if you’re looking for specifics, here’s my editing list: I assess purpose, energy, tone, form, symmetry and cadence of ideas, themes, diction, vocabulary, use of all senses, use of texture words, symbols, sentence length, speaking voice, and line breaks. The list evolves over time as well, but that’s what it looks like today.
When the list is done, the poem is complete—kind of. If possible, I age the poem again and then edit it again. But I often find it more useful to move on to other poems or research. Working on other poems usually gives me the necessary distance to reflect on the finished work, and how it might fit into a larger collection, or how something still isn’t sitting right. Taking a step back to reflect is just as important as diving into the work.
One last point. As I edit, I keep a keen eye out for quality. It often happens that a good idea or a good line just does not fit within the current poem. But that does not make the line garbage. I keep a poetry scrapyard file full of lines that didn’t work. Often, I’ve used one of these lines as a seed for an entirely new poem. Other times, I’ve used these lines to fix a floundering poem. If you create a good line, keep it. Your ideas are valuable.