Editing Techniques

How interesting!
I don't use free verse, so my editing process is a bit different.
When I have a "first draft" down, I:
-start checking the metre, rhyming, whatever else is required for the form I have chosen, and change accordingly.
-read it aloud to hear the flow.
-strengthen the images /pick better words.
-tweak metre etc.
-read aloud.
-tweak until it sounds right.

I usually just work on the ones that don't have piss or vomit on them.

Honestly, I don't edit my poetry. Other than a scan for spelling and comprehension, does the punctuation aid with rhythm and pacing, redundant words and phrases, etc.

Occasionally someone will point something out, and I'll go back and check and consider it, but really, once a poem is done, for me, it's done.

i edit to the same degree one would edit one's handprint in hardening pavement.

It depends.

I edit while I write. My poems come very quickly, except in rare instances. On those rare instances where the poem doesn't come quickly, it usually takes multiple rewrites to get it where I want it. If my muse is "on" at the moment, then not much needs editing.

However, I have gone back a year later and edited poems I thought were finished when I read them again. Nothing much, usually formatting. An occasional word change. I also have edited old poems from my youth and turned them into something better. Those took some work.

If I am uncertain a poem is the best it can be, or if I wish to make sure it is, then I post it in Poetry Crit and consider the feedback. Feedback is invaluable for the polish, imo. Whether you take it and use it or not.

Wow, those are all logical ways of editing. I usually just go in blindly and edit what feels "right." Some poems are hardly touched. More than a few have been slashed nearly to bits or burned entirely (sometimes literally).

cwschizzy said:

Wow, those are all logical ways of editing. I usually just go in blindly and edit what feels "right." Some poems are hardly touched. More than a few have been slashed nearly to bits or burned entirely (sometimes literally).

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Oh, no, no, no, no, no!

Do not burn your poems. Or toss them away in the trash. They can always be dissected and the good bits preserved for future works. You never know what you might be able to splice together into a work of art. But if you destroy the words, they are gone.

I think I have done all of the above except never revised and destroyed on purpose. I've revised work written when I was in high school, posted in the crit section (done before I submit anything for publication because my opinion of my work is biased), revised for meter (etc.), read aloud for flow, edited while writing.

I have also edited line or word count to meet specific publication guidelines.

Different poems, for me, require different approaches for editing. However, in general, it's several days before I post something for critique and then many versions later before I consider submission. There are those few that just flow in the moment, that then accept minor tweaks, word swaps or syntactical refactoring--I don't bother myself with plucking out repetitions or reformulations, unless they harm the logic of the piece. For me, it's about the logic, and weeding out the over obvious; I hate being obvious.

The staring point is getting it down. i write metrically, so this is the core run of each line from the get go; I write to strict constructs and compounds, so this is also second nature during the initial composition--but I do lend myself freedom to break if the idea isn't quite formulated on the page yet. Editing for me starts there, page holds the poem. Then I condense, expand or even reformulate as needed, before finally refactoring...

I can honestly say that conceptual questioning such as

1) did I already say this elsewhere
2) is this what I meant
3) are the words the correct words and are there better words.

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would only hamper my creativity, and I'd think it bogs down most poets. I don't see any point in applying conditional phasing to what a poem does or says. There's something formulaic and almost mechanical that comes from such practices.

Oddly enough, in my professional life I'm a code monkey, and as such should be expected to apply strict regulation and practices to my code... but even then I don't really. I author my code as I see it in my head and to the methods I want it to flow. As with poetry, I clean it of overstatement, bloat and integrated details, refactor, abstract/simplify and modularise until it exists as almost pure logic--that then is implemented to event driven statements in reference to the base logic, actually, just like the end result of my poetry.

When I was taking creative writing classes, two of the things that really seemed to be emphasized the most regarding editing poetry are: making sure the form of the poem works with its content, and analyzing the poem's techniques and their functions.

I read in Robert Henri's "The Art Spirit" that an experienced painter can tell the emotion of every brushstroke in any painting. Whatever was in the painters mind will show both in the whole and in every detail.

I think this applies to poetry as well. So for me I cannot edit without heart. I must feel the same as I would expect the reader to feel. This will sort out which lines is packed with meaning and those that are to a very little degree or not at all. Even though the line could be unclear or seemingly badly put together with a more disinterested aproach I still keep it against all advice. Every line that throws me out of the poem must go altogether or be replaced. I am in the same state of mind when I edit the poem as when I write it. I might not know what everything means in the poem, but if I feel it that doesnt matter. I edit the poem to be true to sensations it ought to produce in me, that's the maxim, and all else can be disregarded. Luckily sometimes the other necessary virtues will still be there in the poem although I neglected them.

With this method some of the lines could be uneconomical or weird looking, but as long as I know that if I change anything with it I don't feel as I ought to feel then it is okay.

Whilst keeping weird lines for other intentions would be ill advice, this is realy important to me because I rely on suggestion a lot. I also fail alot with this method, but that is okay.

Maybe I am stating something obvious that everyone does already, but I am fairly new to poetry and this is my current method with all its faults.

I have two folders for my poems. One is for "finished" and one for "needs work". I have rewrote poems from both folders. "A poem is never finished only abandoned" said someone.

Because I still consider myself a beginner, I rewrite based on new things I've learned about the kind of poems I want to write.

The opening line is my key. I don't always get it right and the poem suffers. When that line is right, the poem seems to write itself.

Sometimes an opening line for a poem occurs much later, once while watching a TV program.

Some major poets have confessed that they constantly tinker with their poems.

JustSarah said:

With a poem your not really having to worry about something like is this scene completely extraneous, as your not necessarily having to worry about having a plot. (Unless of course your doing one of those "verse novels.")

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Hmmm, not sure I agree. Never really a plot? There should be some kind of progression--stuck spinning your words on a single re-iterated image or thought across multiple stanzas doesn't really work and would be the poetic equivalent of an 'extraneous' scene. The poem, even if a nonsense poem should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... much like any other form of writing (or at least it should present that same level of completeness).

Steppe said:

Some major poets have confessed that they constantly tinker with their poems.

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I'm guilty of this. Sometimes even going back after several years to edit a poem...

In my volume of Marianne Moore's poems beginning at page xxv in the introduction, it talks about her going through multiple revisions of her poems, one poem "Sun" going through "sixty years of revision".