A Poet's Editing Moves

**Fenny West** Thu 30 Oct 2008, 4:54 am

Write first, then edit. You can't do both at once. These are "moves" that will improve your poem.

1. Examine the beginning. Cross out all pre-game chatter, especially:
invocations to the muse--unless you actually know a muse and have some reasonable expectation of help from her
apologies
warm-ups
allusions to other works of art
explaining why you wrote the poem
explaining anything else
expressing worry at being misunderstood
expressing fear of being trite or corny

2. Examine the ending. Cross out all phoniness, especially:
late attempts to be profound and meaningful and artistic and wise
out-of-the-blue references to death, God, infinity, and broken dolls
trailing off with three dots like this . . .
"it was all a dream"
screenplay language, camera moves, etc. ("fade to black")

3. After the above trimming of beginning and end, examine what is left, no matter how small.
Does it start with a bang?
Could anyone say "So what?" or "Who cares?" to the first line?
Does the poem make sense?
Can you paraphrase the action in plain English prose? Is there any action?
Does the poem raise any issues without dealing with them?
Does the poem make the exact same point twice or more?

4. Optimize the language
Replace any word you can't pronounce
Replace all words that produce no mental picture. Replace "baby forest animal" with "red fox kit." Replace "cosmic energy" with "nine-volt Eveready battery: silver, blue, and red."
Replace fancy words with plain
Replace foreign words with English
Replace old-fashioned words with modern
Never ever trust a thesaurus; but do use a dictionary.
Always use your spell-checker, but supervise it closely

5. Read the poem OUT LOUD, three times.
If you can't, there's a problem.
Remove any tongue-twisters.
Notice accidental rhyming, remove it unless it works.
If you run out of breath in the middle of a line, fix the line breaks.
If you misread a word, it's probably the wrong word
David Weinstock lives, writes, and teaches an open weekly poetry workshop in Middlebury, Vermont.

DesertRose