‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; – poetry; the best words in the best order.’
S. T. Coleridge
Yesterday I read the words of an editor on the front page of their website. It seems that running a magazine is hard work and takes a lot of time. I had never imagined otherwise. I base this on the fact that I spent yesterday pushing words round paper. By the time I had finished I had taken three unpublishable poems and turned them into one possibly publishable poem and two that were better than when I started on them.
Poetry takes time. Lots of time.
I read some background, cogitated, deleted a few words, added a few words, deleted them, went back to the first version, and, in a flash of inspiration, deleted the first verse and the last verse and carried on messing with words.
Then I moved on to the next one . . .
The tricky thing I find, is that it’s surprisingly easy to alter something and make the poem worse.
Sometimes, when I’m in full flow, I can write a whole poem and it doesn’t need altering. I wrote one like that once and it was highly commended in a competition. I need to practice more and try to get back to that.
One of my free verse poems, when edited, turned into a haibun. Not quite sure how it happened, but it just seemed to fall into shape as I edited. It might be similar to what sports coaches call “muscle memory” – I’ve written so many haibun that I can’t write anything else. That’s unfortunate, because, as a previous editor pointed out recently, I can’t write haibun. 🙂
I’ve used pictures of Julia’s woodturning, because it’s very much like poetry. You start off with hope and a battery of skills and, if you are lucky, you end up finding something that is better than you hoped.
Stretching the genre boundaries seems like a good thing.
Julia does some very beautiful work!
Pushing is always good. She does, and she gets better week by week.
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Yes, it is easy to make things worse while trying to improve them as I know from long experience.
That was why I gave up my early ambitions to be a clock repairer. I was ten years old and I really thought I was helping . . . 🙂
so pretty though
That is true. 🙂
she made the honey server?
Not yet. She has a number of other projects in mind and is ignoring the suggestion, particularly as we never use one. 🙂
Yes, wise words and good metaphor. Truly, Quercus, your dedication and diligence are an inspiration.
That may be overdoing it a bit, but thank you all the same. 🙂
Wise words
🙂 Thank you Derrick!