The dVerse Poets Pub prompt for Poetics is Blue Tuesday. Sarah challenges us to write Blue poems which gave me an idea for another redraft, “Put a color on it.” This a great way to think about revising to emotion as well. When you’ve identified the mood and emotion you want your poem to convey, ask yourself what color that is and use that color as a filter for redrafting your poem. The Sherwin-Williams paint colors site is a great tool for exploring color families and color names.
Put a color on it
For this poem, I imagined using a blue lens on my camera and using it to tint my poem. I used some of the draft from the thesaurus game below and made it blue.
Seeing in Blue
An atmospheric perception after the rain in the steam of warm rain captures contrary smoky-azurite wings those wings just can’t agree pulsating rhythmic reflections in a poll the rhythm’s inverted beats in a pool’s still, faded-flaxflower waters
Rapture jammed with glacial conceits fancy whims chilling beneath mid-cloudburst like ebbtide in advance it will advance the tide of the swimming, sense of falling falling, falling into this dive maneuvering eviction from a wondrous whirlpool
The outlook grows lake-water crisp Ow! It bites, clarity after a meditative rainstorm’s punctuation all those taps, droppy drips untimately leads to discovering the fountain, finally find, what’s to find transmitting blissful moonmist
Seeing Blue by Maria L. Berg 2021
I thought of a couple more quick and easy redrafting techniques over the weekend. I am a huge fan of my thesaurus and thought what fun it would be to use my thesaurus to come up with replacements for all of the main nouns and verbs. I’ll call this exercise Thesaurus Game.
Thesaurus Game
Here’s what I came up with using the first stanza of the original short-centered line poem “Indelible Marks” for demonstration:
Permanent Symbols
a perception captures contrary wings flittering in range of a basin’s elbowroom
jammed with glacial conceits mid-provocation like ear-ringing in advance of the swimming, sense of falling, maneuvering eviction from a coil
the outlook grows crisp as if ultimately discovering the fountain transporting pervading corruption saturation
While reading the Back Draft:John Murillo interview, the two versions of “Mercy, Mercy Me” made me think of another, somewhat simple redraft I can do. I can turn it upside down. I think I will add that to my process at the beginning of redrafting.
Turn It Upside-Down
When I took the full, long lines of the current draft and turned them upside down, I didn’t find a lot of inspiration, but when I took the short, centered lines and turned them upside down, I found some interesting lines. That inspired me to completely reverse the words which also revealed some interesting lines.
Drag center line to the right or left to reveal each poem
This comparison block makes me happy! I liked how Back Draft on Guernica was comparing their first draft and final draft poems using JuxtaposeJS, so I created a Juxtapose on the knightlab site, but the HTML wasn’t working with WordPress. I found a work-around which included downloading a plug-in and writing more HTML, and I was planning on trying it for the final poem reveal, but now I don’t have to. Yay for comparison block. Thank you WordPress.
After all my redrafts, I plan to make my final choices and send a draft off for some feedback. I plan to try both Scribophile and Poetry Free for All. Both of these sites expect you to give feedback before you post asking for feedback, so I thought I would get started. The main writing page of Scribophile is mostly novel excerpts and short stories, however, I found active poetry groups, joined, and gave some feedback. I joined Poetry as Craft and Poetry Critique Circle.
I took a look at The Poetry Free-for-all, but I think I’ll see what happens with Scribophile first. I like the inline critique format there.
Quick Review
I started the day by printing all of the drafts so far to get a good look at the choices I’ve made. Through free-writing, mind-mapping, and writing a narrative poem, I was inspired to make some large changes to the first two stanzas.
I played with form. I tried past tense. I played the opposites game to come up with an opposite poem, and I combined the opposite lines with the original. Let’s keep going.
Cut each line in half. Write a new beginning and/or ending for each line.
I’m going to go ahead and use the final poem from my last post that included the opposite lines for this draft. As I read through, separating each line, I decided to put my arsonist line and its opposite back in to play. I broke some of the longer lines into four parts. I’m using lines and ideas from my narrative poem to fill in some of the lines which I think is working well.
A Fruit Fly-Sized Thought Changes Everything
An impression arrests fruit flies mid-flight, specks in eye corners before the cracked pane among the pitiful, stained porcelain in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation An ignored cry for attention like reddened, sore hands scouring or tinnitis of Meniere’s recognized or diagnosed frees a cougar from a shower of ineptitude leaping from empty thought on fire before dizzying vertigo while in fruitless and futile meditation, I don’t hear the tractor like hearing you clearly, I step from my spiraling a voice of truth whispers from miles away the view becomes clear, his sweat on her behind the bale as if finally finding the source, the teasing hidden cruelty of wafting, permeating decay after the ground falls away and I embrace the free-fall letting my arms, and my dress, fly freely above my head, my pinky-toe the stoicism of a point a heart slammed closed kills confusion, how small my worries, each a fruit fly in the sink A solution, so long obscured by chores and basic needs, unlike instantly losing a copy of each daily exercise toward demise over the vast, yellowed field of placid, dry existence
Contentment empties the song of passion, the hips of sway what good is the stick in rubber cement if it leeches the glue of flavor? time steals the scissors, so sharp and shiny, sheathed in brown leather, treasured and hides them whenever desperately needed for artistry Restlessness fills pockets with bland slime, lacking sparkle or elasticity, only a blob with weight like a stomach full of rocks someone who gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence but constant irritation and itching desire keep me in motion juggling the stomach rocks though insatiable hunger remains creating irregular comfort, making a pet of each stone swallowed though the scratched, tender throat needs be constantly quenched with clarity, I drink the elixir truth brings, purple and sweet as grape Kool-Aid I set the faded flower curtains aflame, a self-fulfilling responsibility the arsonist of bridges, can’t choose to turn around with nothing I’ve left, clean of any sticky coating a fire fighter for chasms needs a very long hose the charred frame remains absent everything you’ve saved fleeing obscures the crackling and the smoke the path ahead holds the divots and clawing roots of many whims what indelible marks will stay on my raw skin? which curses will topple to the tongue? your erasable touches won’t last through the first rain and I’ll take with me this lesson~stand away from an ass
Refreshment wriggles like worms in the garden blindly boring among the moles making mountains under the tent, my temporary shelter of turquoise and lilac, not offering camouflage against the deep forest greens however, its thin nylon walls offer the illusion of solitude Thirst sits in the grass picking dandelions and dreaming so far, I am camping, not homeless having vacated the house without a plan knowing there is no way back, but clutching ideas I left the kitchen sink, the burning curtains, the cracked pane, and him to the fruit flies refusing to leave a wildness, the definition of me, to putridity I let go of the nonsense of conformity to expectation and a singular route with blinders forcing my way choosing instead the claws in the paws of the freshly showered cougar the dark, fresh-earth mole tunnels full of worms and beetles and ants and spiders under my tent filter and aerate the earth like new and curious spaces for contemplation a beam of light breaks through thick fir canopy revealing a clutch of rabbits in the brush destroying any old or bored blanks of not thinking these bunnies crawling, not seeing, as they emerge from an underground nest inspire me to try varying perspectives, to look from under and from high above, perspectives that may nourish new understanding here, walking vision, I face fears to love myself again this fresh hunger will not feed old stubbornness
-Wow. That was great! So many new and interesting lines. If only a couple work with the poem, that’s gravy. The rest may make their way into other poems. I’m going to print this and start highlighting my favorite lines.
Choose the best lines and free-write. Dig down, find the deeper meaning.
As I went through, I did some quick editing and the lines I chose to explore further are:
after the ground falls away and I embrace free-fall, letting my arms and my dress, fly above my head, my pinky-toe the stoical point
a heart slammed closed kills confusion
but constant irritation and itching desire keep me in motion, juggling stomach rocks, insatiable hunger remains
your erasable touches won’t last past the first rain
An excerpt from my free-write:
I think some of the new lines work in the original poem. I now have a kill my darlings dilemma with the first line of the second stanza, they both work, but she’s thinking about her own artistry and skill being wasted, not any passion she once felt for him. So I’ll save songs and hips for something else. I think the lines of the ground falling away and telescoping view go well with vertigo, so I’m going to try them with the first stanza. What about that pinky-toe at a stoical point? That works with the next line, stepping out of the spiral, so it’s the tether that pulls her out.
~Maria L. Berg’s journal
Use the best line as the beginning of a new poem
I was going to combine this with “Force into a Form” in the next post, but while I was free-writing, it just happened. I really like the line “A heart slammed closed kills confusion,” but it doesn’t really fit with the original poem as is. As I started to write about it here’s what I wrote:
A heart slammed closed kills confusion
-maybe breaks confusion’s tiny bones breaking the what ifs, grinding the what could bes to dust, scattering the woulda-couldas to the corners or into the dark waters, but not collecting them in an urn, on the mantel, or planting them among mycelium. No. This death is final, sealed in a crypt where the rock can’t be rolled away on any third day.
Cut up and create a collage poem
I enjoy doing collage poems. For this one, I’m going to cut up everything I printed this morning, put all of the short phrases (two or three words) into a container and start pulling them out randomly. I already have pages set up in a notebook for this and these cool glue pens.
Next Steps
There are two more redrafting exercises I want to explore for the next post. I think we’ve already covered “Expand, write past the ending, and I think I’ll combine “Tighten, to it’s most succinct telling” with “Force into a form.”
Force into a form, or change from formal form to free verse.
Though this poem started in a form, it is a form of my invention, so at this point, it may help to play with some other forms, specifically some rhyming and line repetition forms. For this experiment, I took a look back through my OctPoWriMo 2020 posts and decided on:
In my post Relax and Process from last October, I tried an exercise called Channeling Emotion. This made me think of something to add to the Review process. Right after moods and themes, we should identify the emotions: both the emotions in the poem and also the emotion you feel when you read it. These are important things to identify during the review because we may want to revise to bring out these emotions.
Emulate another poem or poet
A while ago, I went through all of my copies of the New Yorker and Poets & Writers and picked out my favorite poems.
For this exercise, I chose Dead Stars by Ada Limon, Ode by Jane Huffman, and News by Ben Purkert. Before deciding how I want to emulate these poems, I want to know more about them.
Jane Huffman is the Editor of Guesthouse Literary Journal. I highly recommend taking a look at the Foreward to Issue 7. It’s full of amazing images and discusses the content of the issue.
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
Redraft
Let’s warm-up with some fun and easy changes, and build through our drafts and choices.
Play with Line Length and spacing, the visual look of the poem
to look at short, centered lines. Let’s see what that looks like:
Indelible Marks
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left, what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
That is fun. I definitely like that.
Write the poem in different POVs and tenses to find the strongest telling.
The only place in the poem that shows that this poem is written in first person are my new lines in the second stanza, “to this arsonist of bridges with nothing I’ve left.” I think this line, though it’s doing lots of work, isn’t what works with this poem. Is the Janus turn I intended worth it, since I use it in the next stanza as well? Any ideas? Let’s see what I can come up with.
Indelible Marks
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain with clarity, a responsibility what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
A different form in a different tense:
Curious Spaces for Contemplation
An impression arrested fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo stepped out of a spiral, the view became clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay
Contentment emptied the glue of flavor and stole the scissors of artistry but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remained with clarity, a self-fulfilling responsibility what indelible marks will topple to the tongue?
Refreshment wriggled among the moles under the tent of solitude vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrated new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, could nourish new understanding
For each line, write its opposite. Search for the turn in the poem.
For this exercise, let’s stay with the short lines centered and play with opposites.
Invisible Ink
An ignored cry for attention frees (what is the opposite of fruit flies) a cougar from a shower empty of thought on fire while at peace (in meditation) like hearing you clearly from miles away
after the still grounded stoicism of a point the closed dies fogged, unlike instantly losing a copy of placid dry existence
Restlessness fills the slime bland or gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence and irregular comfort or constantly quenched flee obscured many whims the erasable touches won’t stand away from an ass?
Thirst sits in the grass over non-sheltered groups of people refusing to leave a wildness letting go of nonsense or right a singular idea from the (what is the opposite of fruit flies?) cougar a light, destroyed sky blockades adumbrate old or bored blanks of not thinking here walking vision will not feed old ignorance/stubbornness
Combine the opposites with the original
The Kitchen Sink is Backed Up Again
An impression arrests fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas An ignored cry for attention frees a cougar from a shower frozen mid-irritation, like tinnitus of Meniere’s before the dizzying vertigo empty of though,t on fire while in meditation like hearing you clearly from miles away stepping out of a spiral, the view becomes clear, as if finally finding the source of wafting, permeating decay after the still grounded stoicism of a point the closed dies fogged, unlike instantly losing a copy of placid, dry existence
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry Restlessness fills with bland slime, or gifts some screwdrivers of incompetence but constant irritation and insatiable hunger remain creating irregular comfort constantly quenched with clarity, a self-fulfilling responsibility fleeing obscures many whims what indelible marks will topple to the tongue? the erasable touches won’t stand away from an ass?
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude Thirst sits in the grass over non-sheltered groups of people having vacated the house clutching ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies refusing to leave a wildness, letting go of nonsense, or right a singular idea from the cougar the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation a light, destroyed sky blockades adumbrate old or bored blanks of not thinking where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding here walking vision will not feed old stubbornness
Next Steps
At this point in the process, it looks like I’ve made more of a mangled mess than improvement, but I do like some of the new phrases created by the opposites. I’ll free-write around my favorites in my morning pages and see if they add to the poem. In the next post, I’ll play around with more expansion techniques and then put it all together into a new draft.
The seed yet planted has potential it may be the one to burst into sprout the tiny green hope watched by the discerning eye not ignored as the yellow flowers in the garden, the kale gone to seed soon composted to clear the way
That quadrille (a poem of 44 words) in response to today’s dVerse Poets Pub prompt, feels like a great way to start this week’s adventure in revision. Merril’s prompt “seed” is also a fun tie-in, because it’s a Janus word.
Now that the April challenges have ended and I have over thirty new poems drafted, it’s time to think about revision. Last year in May, I had the same idea. I read a lot of posts and books and started charting my revision process in my poetry notebook. I’m going to attempt to approach each draft as a seed, full of potential.
The Process
Here’s what I have come up with thus far:
Review
After letting a poem rest a while, come back to it as if reading someone else’s poem for the first time. What do I like about it? What don’t I like about it?
Here is my review checklist:
Identify POV, tense, form, voice
setting, narrative
themes, moods
words to mind map
alternate titles
highlight the best lines
mark weak verbs & nouns
mark areas to expand
highlight cliche language
choose what to edit to (theme, idea)
make notes to guide re-write
Redraft
Here are some ideas to try while redrafting a poem:
Choose the best lines and freewrite. Dig down, find the deeper meaning.
Use the best line as the beginning of a new poem.
For each line, write its opposite. Search for the turn in the poem.
Cut each line in half. Write a new beginning and/or ending for each line.
Write the poem in different POVs and tenses to find the strongest telling.
Expand, write past the ending. Tighten, to it’s most succinct telling.
Force into a form, or change from formal form to free verse.
Revise
Read the poem aloud. Feel the words in your mouth. Sing it to your favorite songs. Walk to it. Dance to it. Feel the rhythm. Have the computer read it aloud. Highlight anything that doesn’t flow, that doesn’t sound right, anything that feels forced or doesn’t fit.
Feedback
When you feel ready for some feedback, you might want to try Poetry Free-For-All, an online poetry workshop for poets to exchange critiques. There is a lot of useful information in the forums including A Workshop for One.
I like that poets giving critiques are called critters. It makes me think of the campy horror movies. It’s fun to imagine getting poetry feedback from balls of fur with sharp teeth.
Learn from other poets
The forums of Poetry Free-For-All also include an extensive Recommended Reading list.
Take the useful feedback and things you’ve liked from reading and listening to other poets talking about their work and come to your poem again with a fresh, critical eye. Read it aloud until it feels good in your mouth and body while clearly expressing your intended meaning.
A Demonstration
I thought it would be fun and useful to take the first poem I wrote this April, since it has had a good rest, and demonstrate each step through the entire process as a series of posts this week.
An impression arrests the fruit flies in kitchen sinks full of ideas frozen in mid-irritation, fleeting yet multiplying before your eyes what indelible marks will topple to the tongue and adumbrate the growing clutch
Contentment empties the glue of flavor and steals the scissors of artistry the constant irritation and insatiable hunger –of those fruit flies, feeding in the sinks– sketch an impression of furious flight
Refreshment wriggles among the moles under the tent of solitude having vacated the house with the ideas, but left the kitchen sink to the fruit flies the dark, fresh-earth tunnels adumbrate new and curious spaces for contemplation where crawling, not seeing, may nourish new understanding
The Draft
This poem draft follows a form I created myself that for now I call the Jar and Janus form. I started collecting words in vases last year when I enjoyed the Coursera course Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop with Douglas Kearney for the second time. While working with abstract and concrete nouns, I decided to create vases full of each, to make random connections to spark ideas.
For each stanza of this poem, the form (followed loosely) is:
expand on the response in line two including a Janus word
Use the Janus word to say the opposite, or create a second thought, or point of view
Repeat for as many stanzas as you like
Now that the draft is created, the form isn’t particularly important, except to remember the Janus words and think about their opposite meanings.
Motivations
Before we dive into revision, it’s a good idea to focus intention. Why do I want to revise this poem? I want to improve it, of course, but why? And why this poem?
I want to revise this poem because:
It’s one of the first examples of a form I invented and I want to continue to explore the form.
I want to take one of April’s poems through revision to work through my revision process. This poem has had the most time to rest.
I think it’s a good example of my unique poetic voice that I want to continue to develop.
Though I will be publishing the revised poem here, so it won’t be eligible for journal publication, if I love the results, I may want to include it in a collection.
Since I plan on developing this form further, what I learn from this revision could be very useful for future poems.
My main motivation is to learn by doing and share the experience to inform others.
Next Steps
I hope you will join me this week taking a poem through all of the steps of my revision process. In my next post we’ll go through the Review and plan some re-writes.
For once, I overwrote. I have a story that needs to be told in less than half as many words, so I thought I’d spend a little time and create a plan for this first revision.
This Week’s Revision Plan
First steps:
print out the story
read aloud
highlight best lines/parts
cross out parts I don’t like
ask questions to get to the core of the story
write logline/ elevator pitch/ summary
increase conflict
explore possibilities
re-write
Questions to get to core of story:
Who is this story really about?
What does that person want more than anything?
What is in the way of getting that desire?
How will she overcome the conflict?
Was the desire, once achieved, really what she needed?
How has the ordeal changed her?
Why is this story important?
Why do I want to tell it?
Next steps:
Repeat first steps 1-4
focus on opening line: try at least ten other possibilities. Have I drawn the reader in with a whisper of everything to come?
focus on ending: try cutting last line, last paragraph, try adding a paragraph or two to find real ending. Have I left the reader wanting more; feeling something, thinking?
focus on dialogue: are the voices unique? dialogue as tight as possible?
focus on setting: does every description do double duty (mood, symbolism, character development)? Is every object there for a reason? Have I described for the reader what I see in my head, really put it on the page?
focus on characters: play with unique, concise descriptors (think pessimistic moustache). Does each character jump off the page? Can the reader relate to them, empathize with them?
focus on the senses: have I created vivid experiences using all five senses? Are there sounds, smells, textures, tastes as well as sights? What associations am I trying to elicit in the reader with these choices?
focus on sentence variance, sound and rhythm
focus on sentence clarity: am I really saying what I mean to say?
focus on word choice: strong verbs, specific nouns
hunt for and remove over-used words
hunt for and remove clichés
print out and read aloud as a final spell-check, specifically for homonyms and other small errors computers don’t catch.
Looks like an overwhelming amount of work, but I have a week and many of the next steps will be revisited over the next few weeks of revisions as well. I’ll probably add to this list as I work. I hope you find it helpful. If you have revision checklists or processes that you would like to share, feel free to add a link in the comments.
Experience Writing 