[stylist] poem revisions

[William L Houts]

HI Barbara,

I make a kind of game out of my revisions.  Sometimes, I'll just cruise 
through my poetry folder ("Cosmos") and rnandomly give a once over to 
one or even several poems; just eyeball them to see how I feel days, 
weeks or months after first writing them. Gradually, over time, all of 
myh poems get at least minor revisions, and over the long haul they all 
get at least two or three overhauls.  I've adopted a kind of joyful 
bloodymindedness about it all, so there's not even a twinge of pain 
about doing this, and I feel that my poetry in general really does 
improve with time.  I used to be very squeamish and protective about my 
stuff, and had a real case of the horrors when it came to editing.  But 
now I really enjoy the process  and my work in general has, I feel, 
improved. My advice is to keep in mind that Word documents (or 
Wordperfect or what have you) exist in order to be revised.  It's so 
easy to delete, and almost as easy to rewrite, to commit new thoughts to 
the page that there's no reason to sufferthrough the process.  Just 
remember that hope springs eternal --and so does poetry.  >grin<



--Bill








On 6/18/2015 9:36 AM, Barbara HAMMEL via stylist wrote:
>
> I know, for years I've been saying I was going to try revising my poems. As you know, I have always thought a poem complete and the way it was meant to be until you fine folks informed me that improvements could be made on them. But, somehow, I can't bring myself to do it because it would mess up my extensively organized folders by doing that. My question is, do you then count a revised poem as a new one? You'll probably tell me it's up to me what I do but I need help tricking my brain because if I rewrite something, seems to me it should have a new date. I have actually sorted my poems into ones I want to work on revising and which are too personal or too awful or stupid to waste my time improving on.
> Barbara
> Sent from my iPhone
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-- 


"Oh, Sophie!  Whyfore have you eated all de cheeldren?"