Here’s Nan Cohen’s poem, “Bee 3,”from her 2017 book, “Unfinished City,” from Gunpowder Press in Santa Barbara.
Bee 3
To look at a dead creature, however small,
A kind of prayer. You can look and look,
No one will stop you.
The way there is no end to prayers.
The way they travel out.
Going silent for a while,
Then taken up again.
A honeybee, dusted with pollen.
The stillness of its legs.
Craft and Prompt:
I just spent the morning helping my nine-year old research a five paragraph report about Albert Einstein. My son got stuck at several junctures. We pulled up the five-paragraph formula for third graders, and then we researched Einstein’s famous physics formula. I’m generally not a fan of formulas for poems, but I guarantee (say it with a faux Cajun accent) if you sit down and use these formulas for revision, you’ll come out ahead.
1)
First, find a poem that you love and determine why you love it. (I chose the Nan Cohen poem above.)
Then, find a poem that you hate and determine why you hate it.
What have you learned about your sensibility as a poet?
2)
Then, pull out a poem of your own, one that you’re not quite happy with. Pick up the poem and hold it in your hand like an apple or a rock, turning it around to view it from all angles. Think about the poem as a physical object, a plastic entity like a painting or a sculpture, or even a musical composition. Basically, think of the poem as something other than a poem. And, then, think about what it needs. What does this strange art object require that it doesn’t yet have? Remember drawing lessons? Can you see the poem’s negative space as well as its positive space?
3)
For example, look and see what's going on in the far left corner of the poem. Does it have a little dirt underneath leftover from the earth from where it was pried? How was the poem, my little apple, attached to its tree--what about that crevasse or bellybutton in the apple where the stem reaches down to attach to the core?
Does the poem have everything it needs to survive? What is it lacking? How can you give it that?
4)
There are no set rules about revision except to continue going about it however you can. You learn by doing it; it’s a physical endeavor like reaching for the next hold in on a rock climbing wall or catching a softball. You get better as you practice it; likewise, if you don't practice it, your revision muscles atrophy. It is a dogged practice.
5)
Things can always be tweaked, or changed, even just the shifting of a pronoun can give us a little more space to live. It’s like asking yourself—“What am I feeling? What’s wrong?” Ask that of the poem as you would examine your little suffering houseplant with the sadly curling leaves. What is it feeling? What’s going wrong for it? Once you have identified that, half the battle is won! Don’t be afraid to state what the poem is lacking, this is the only way it can get what it needs to flourish.
Revision is detachment combined with empathy, and a love and respect for the reader--always imagining how the poem will be heard or felt by its reader.
6)
I like to record myself reading a poem and listen to it--where does it falter, where does it work? I use the “Voice Memos” app on my iPhone. It’s awesome. Play your poem in the car or on your earbuds when you are walking into the grocery store. How does it strike you then?
Then, record someone else reading your poem! Just ask them; be brave. Where does their reading falter? Is that a place where the poem falters? Listen to the recording alone.
At a higher level, revision is all about sensibility, which is where this craft and prompt started: I am designing a poem, I am composing a poem. Then I am composing an entire book--a big big poem, by arranging and fixing lots of little poems. But that's a topic for another blog!
If you went through these organic processes, I am sure you learned something that will lead to better writing. I’m sure you also might be exhausted, so here’s a simple cocktail recipe that we’ve been having around my house. Making the rosemary syrup is pretty darn fun.
Finally, do you know the online journal At Length? It’s fabulous. Jonathan Farmer started it quite a few years ago in North Carolina, and they publish poems in series.
