Revision, or The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

Posted April 9th, 2010 / By Ben Hurst in Fiction/Poetry

I’m often asked by poets who are just beginning to get serious about their craft: What is the most important thing for a poet to do in order to get better and, subsequently, get published? I have a simple yet frightening answer: revision.

I know a few of my readers may have already shut off their computers, smashed in their screens, or run from the room screaming in fits of frightened rage. This is acceptable. Now, for those of you who are left, I’ll be discussing the first of all the many hindrances that poets usually have in establishing a routine of revision. Then I’ll compare the art of poetry with other art forms, and finish with a discussion of the finer points of how revision works in a poem.

The Beast Looms

Let’s say you’ve just written down a poem on the back of a napkin. It is perfect in every way and encapsulates completely every emotion you are currently feeling, along with your socio-political stance and your preference on Proposition 8. Later that night, as you are emptying your pockets of lint and ketchup packets, you pull out this crumpled up masterpiece. After reading it again, however, you discover that while it may have seemed like a masterpiece before, it certainly doesn’t seem so now. You now have three choices:

1. Claim that to change the work now would defile its emotional content and would ruin it as a whole.
2. Throw the napkin away with disdain, claiming that if it were really a good poem it would have stood the test of 24 hours.
3. Write (or type) it down on a clean sheet of paper and begin to analyze the parts of it that now seem to be weak.

In all honesty, I have done all three of these. Only one of them helped me get published and get my work out there, however, and it was of course the final one.

What is Revision?

There are a few misconceptions that poets have to get rid of before they will be able to revise effectively. First of all, dismiss the thought that when you revise a poem that you are forsaking the truth of the complex emotion that you experienced while you were writing that poem. That emotion is not going anywhere because it is a part of you, whether it be in your history or in your present. When you revise a poem, you take the rough edges of a diamond and you polish them to the point that someone can plainly see the clarity of the raw material. Even if you try to “preserve your original emotion” by not revising a poem, there will come a time when you will have changed so much through your life that you will no longer be able to connect with that poem in the same way that you once did. Poets must face that fact and do their best to overcome it.

Let us take up the example of another artist: the painter. A painter (if he or she is skilled) will go through many stages of drafting. Beginning with a few ideas and then sketching them out and applying test coats of paint, they move from a very rough idea to a polished, finished product. No one will walk up to Vincent Van Gogh and claim that his final product does not contain any real emotion since it is so far removed from its original state. Painters find a way to move across their ideas as these ideas move beneath them, shifting with their own changing inspiration combined with their constant precision. Poets should be no different.

Making Your Words Speak

The primary thing that a poet needs to do when she is examining a recent draft is to look for any pieces of the poem that are just hanging on like gangrenous limbs. First, look for cliches. Cliches can suck out what precious marrow there is in a poem. The main problem is that cliches don’t say anything. Rather, they are just filler that has been inserted in place of an original idea. For example, if someone were to say “Her breath was as sweet / as a rose, / a rose without thorns,” he would be telling me nothing that popular culture had not been telling me for decades now. “Sweet as a rose” tells its reader nothing beyond the word “sweet,” and this is a weak adjective in itself.

Let us take a page out of the book of Ferdinand de Saussure. He argued that words do not have definite meanings, but rather are defined by what words are placed around them. If we look at this in the context of a poem, then we see that every word that we place in the poem affects every other word already in the poem. By putting a cliche such as “Sweet as a rose” in your poem, you shoot your own poem in the foot and then gag it.

Cliches are not the only things that should be avoided. Any word that does not contribute to your overall design can be suspect. Before beginning the process of revision, ask yourself, “What is this poem trying to say?” In the end, every poem should say something, even if that “something” is that words can be beautifully arranged. After you ask yourself this question, go through your poem and analyze every word based on how effectively it is getting that point across. Are there stanzas of your poem that seem to trail off into another topic for no apparent reason? Cut them or rework them. Are there words that are causing your readers to get a different idea than the one you intended? Examine them closely.

Embrace Feedback

That brings me to my last bit of advice: feedback. Don’t be afraid to let someone else read your work after you have toyed with it long enough. It is important that you take a fair amount of time with a poem in order to let it form itself completely, but after that time has passed, you must take it to a reader and let them absorb it and react to it. I would suggest finding someone you trust, a best friend or a wise, literature-minded elder. Let them look at it and tell you how it makes them feel and what it makes them think of. Compare this with what you had in mind in writing the poem and hopefully you can pinpoint places that need improvement. The important thing is: don’t be afraid of other people. If they can’t offer you something constructive, then their negativity can simply be disregarded. In fact, don’t ever feel obligated to take anyone’s advice, since it is, after all, your poem. I expect, however, that you’ll find people a lot more open and receptive to your work than you might have originally thought.

Once you get over this bridge, nothing can slow you down from making your work its best. Just keep writing, reading, and revising!