notes on revision: the philosophical, or, get rid of what ain’t no wolf

public domain from wikimedia commons

So, Reader, I’ve been thinking about revision. April is Poetry Month and many poets are gearing up to write a poem a day for April. I typically join in this drafting festival, but this year my intuition is saying, You’d be better off doing a revision a day than a poem a day. Of course, as much as I’d prefer diving into new work, I know my intuition is right. I do not need 30 more unfinished, mostly mediocre poems. I need to polish what I’ve been working on lately and send it out into the world.

So, over the last few weeks I’ve been gathering up every bit of revision advice I’ve collected over the years, and I want to share it with you. As I looked it over, I realized it fell into four categories: the philosophical, the usual, the useful, and the radical. I’m planning a post on each category. We’ll start today with “the philosophical,” then drill down to the nitty gritty in “the usual” and “the useful.” We’ll end up with “the radical” — which I hope will generate enthusiasm for the revision work that awaits.

And speaking of philosophical, my philosophy is that most advice for revision is also good advice for life, so I’ll be commenting on that from time to time as well.

Let us begin:

Michelangelo, it is said, believed that his role as sculptor was to free the work of art contained within a block of marble. The quote, as I’m finding it online, is:

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as thought it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

Elie Weisel has similar thoughts about writing:

“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what youput on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.”

To me, both of these philosophies encourage us to understand what a poem is, or wants to be, and to apply our poetic skills to honor that, to bring forth the poem. In this post, I talked about drafting the poem “Letter to Rodin.” I wanted the poem to be about suffering. I fought tooth and nail to make the poem be about suffering! Eventually, I accepted that the poem wanted to be about longing. As soon as I accepted that, and began to work in concert with the poem’s impulse, the draft came together.

I don’t read either of these quotes to mean that we must always cut in revisions. Sometimes, it’s the large silence around a poem that must be cut out — the poem must push its way into that space a bit more to fully unfold.

These quotes do, however, ask us to honor the piece of art for what it truly is and to bring it forth. Sometimes this takes time. Sometimes it takes years, even. If you’re not sure what a poem is trying to be, set it aside for a while. I have a Resting Drawer for just this purpose. Do you have a Resting Drawer? Look through it from time to time. The poem’s impulse may dawn on you one day, and then you can get to work again.

And as in writing, so in life: one of our great tasks as human beings is to cut away at all that is not authentically us; to, instead, be true to the shape of our souls.

My favorite way for remembering this advice in writing and in life comes from the Old Country, also known as The Township, a little spot in northern Michigan that’s home for me. In The Township there’s a man who does snow and ice sculptures. Once, commenting on a sculpture of a wolf he’d carved, he said his process had been to “get rid of what ain’t no wolf” (I am indebted to Gerry for passing along this bit of advice to me. If you want to know about The Township, Gerry’s blog is the place to find out).

Get rid of what ain’t no wolf. That’s a philosophy I can sign up for.

clear as glass, clear as mud

"Frideswide" by Edward Burnes-Jones public domain from wikimedia commons

Lately I’ve been arguing with myself (and with others, although they have no idea as I’ve been arguing with them inside my head) about how clear to be in a poem. How much to give the reader flat out versus how much to hint toward, evoke, suggest, leave ajar. The whole story, beginning to neatly-tied end; or the emotional center of a tale with no sure beginning or end? Should I give them the birdhouse itself, or the shadow of the birdhouse; the snowstorm or the remaining scraps of its memory?

It started with a quote from Lucinda Williams on Writer’s Almanac. She said, “Above all, the listener should be able to understand the poem or the song, not be forced to unravel a complicated, self-indulgent puzzle. Offer your art up to the whole world, not just an elite few.” 

Next was a blog post from Fleda Brown on clarity. She writes: “Just say the truth as you see it.  If a poem begins to come out of that, it’s because you’ve honed your sensibility on your ancestors’ poems, and/or on wonderful contemporary poems, and you’ve absorbed the feeling of how music and meaning can be made. If a poem doesn’t come out of that, then write prose. Write a story, or write your life, or go roller skating. Be brave. Do something genuine. Or go ahead and fail at the poem. We all do.  But fail by laying it all out there, not by hiding everything that really matters to you and asking me to guess what it might be, in the name of poetry.” Earlier in the essay, she reassures us that “there’s a lot of space within the word ‘clarity.’” Still, that “Just say the truth as you see it” has me wondering — what if I see the truth as pock-marked and jagged, or as the shadow of a breeze-blown, translucent curtain through a door cracked open, barely?

On the one hand, I don’t enjoy poems or other forms of art that are, to me, clear as mud, overly complicated to no discernible end, or obviously self-indulgent. I once took a class with a poet who saw herself as a post-modernist collagist using words as her medium (full disclosure: I’m not really sure what post-modernist means). She filled the page with wild tumbles of images. No narrative. No anchors to tie the images to. No helpful titles or epigraphs. None of it. Although I’m not saying it was self-indulgent, I never understood the first thing about her poetry, but I knew she was a devoted reader and writer with an artistic philosophy, so I tried to read her work and give the best response I could: what it evoked, what it felt like, what it made me think of. Still, I didn’t enjoy it and probably would not want to read a book-length collection of poems like hers.

And then there’s the other extreme: the poem laid bare. I think of highly narrative poems, almost “talky,” like Billy Collins’ The Lanyard. He tells us all. He makes a lanyard for his mother, wants it to make things even between them — the debt of all that she has given him paid–, knows it can’t. I’m not saying it’s not a good poem, not well-crafted. He’s a wonderful poet, and funny, and masterful. But poems like “The Lanyard” don’t pull me in in the same way as poems with a bit of mystery do. It’s clear as glass, clean glass with the sun shining through.

What I think I like best in a poem, and other forms of art, is a work that gives me a few footholds, but also gives room to breathe, to weave and unweave, to turn around, trying to remember where I’ve been — a work that allows mystery in, that doesn’t always tie things up neatly. I don’t mind puzzling a bit if the words and images are beautiful or captivating or mysterious enough. I like to be able to read a poem in one season of my life and see x, y, and z. And then to read it again in another season of my life and see only K. Often, I don’t want to be told every last thing. I like it when things can be equivocal, open to interpretation, evoked but not said straight out. This balance of places to stand and pockets of mystery feels like real life to me, feels like the truth as I see it. I think of it as stained glass: the light comes through, here bright, there dim; the leading (that’s lead, as in the metal, -ing) blocks some light completely, but joins the panels together. I think I know what’s going on in this corner, but that dark pocket in the lower right quadrant I’m not sure of — it makes me wonder.

I think of the poem Ariel by Sylvia Plath. I bet I’ve read that poem 100 times, and still, I’m not sure I really “get” it. But it’s images! “And now I / Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.” It’s beautiful sounds! “Pour of tor and distances.” I will read it 100 times more because of its dark excitement, the strange communion it hints at, its mystery.

Writers and readers, artists and lovers of art, where do you fall on this issue of clarity in art? What do you prefer when you are creating, when you are taking in? I would love to know.

P.S. Kathleen Kirk blogged about this last week, too. Read her thoughts here.

wendy in print

"Aunt Pearl's Watermelon, #1" by April Dobbins

calyx (n.) the sepals of a flower, typically forming a whorl that encloses the petals and forms a protective layer around a flower in bud; a cup-like cavity or structure; a journal of art and literature by women produced in Corvalis, OR, and now celebrating its 35th year.

Reader, last week this journal appeared in my mailbox. On page 39 is a poem I wrote about motherhood called “A Wendy House.”

I wrote “Wendy House” when I was in the thick of it — three very small children and in poor health from my chronic autoimmune condition, living far from family, winter. I had been reading Peter Pan to the children (or to the 2/3 of the children who were old enough to listen at that point), and came to the passage about the Darling children’s arrival at the island of Neverland. Do you remember that Wendy was struck by an arrow (Tink’s) and came down from her flight dead, or nearly dead? Then the lost boys built a house around and over her, hoping to protect her, or maybe hoping only to revive her. They wanted a mother.

This passage in the Peter Pan story made me think about life — the way we think our life is going to unfold versus the way it actually does unfold. The “island of make-believe and the same island come true,” as I quote in the epigraph to the poem. And also about motherhood, and the great needs of children, and how all mothers start out as “only / a girl. With no experience.”

This poem was an idea that brewed for a while. Then one day I said to myself, “It’s time to write the Wendy House poem.” I sat down and wrote it, worked on it for a few months, then began sending it out. It was rejected severally (as usual), but this fall I had a note from CALYX saying they’d like to publish it.

I am honored to have my work in the same volume as pieces containing these lines:

“… so slack / are the strings between my bones, so lucky / is my electric blood to be inside my skin.” — from “Reading Whitman in the Chemo Room” by Rochelle Hurt

“Tang was laughing a jellyfish laugh, with his hands on his stomach as it swelled and shriveled.” –from “The Vestige” by Rita Chang

“That’s all there was, it wasn’t much but joy is like that, / joy surprises: the scent of mint, a baby’s wrist, a woman / in a white truck, driving.” — from “Woman in a White Truck, Driving” by Sarah Rossiter

and, this bit from “The Apple Orchard” by Bethany Reid, winner of the 2011 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize:

“Spring mornings / it was a regular whorehouse / of an orchard, the trees / frowsy and bedraggled, / in nightgowns and slippers, / hair tangled, lipstick askew, / straps slipping from their shoulders.”

!!!!! a regular whorehouse / of an orchard !!!!! Reader, that line alone is worth the cover price.

And speaking of the cover, I find the cover photograph to be absolutely stunning. I think it’s my favorite journal cover ever. Have I  mentioned how much I love the cover?

If you haven’t read CALYX, let me recommend it. I’ve read it for years, either borrowing it from friends or subscribing. It never disappoints, is always full of good poetry, fiction, essays, art, and book reviews. It’s thick and varied enough that you can keep it on your nightstand and read through it for months. Happy 35th birthday to CALYX. And thank you for finding a home for Wendy in your pages.

process notes: letter to rodin

from The Gates of Hell

We are lucky to live just down the peninsula from the College Town. This particular college (university actually) has a large, permanent collection of Rodin’s sculptures including a cast of The Gates of Hell, which I think I could sit in front of for the rest of my life and never get bored. Last week and again yesterday, I spent some time with the Rodin collection, and was struck by the commingling of passion and suffering his work seems to embody. One interesting thing about his work is that he’ll often break the scale of a piece and include, for example, an outsized big toe, or a hand that is much too small for its body, or a too-long arm. And many, many of the eyes he sculpted look curiously blind — there, but not there. Another interesting thing about Rodin’s work is that he often leaves bodies purposely unfinished to enlarge the evocative power of a piece. Here’s something he said about that: “A torso contains all of life.” O, he seems to say, we are flawed and unseeing, never finished. By the way, this makes me think about how much to reveal in a poem, versus how much to leave unsaid, allowing the language to evoke without being bossy. But that’s another post for another day.

As I looked at the collection, I was furiously tapping notes into my phone — poem seeds and snatches of language. Words like: gouged, fragment, pocked, torsion, seam.

Thus began my most recent draft, which I came to after spending some time in my notebook scribbling all the words that came to mind as I thought about Rodin’s sculptures and what little I know of his process (one detail of which fascinates me: over time, The Gates of Hell became a work-in-progress and treasure trove of new work. He would add newly shaped forms, take away others, use one figure as a model for a new piece, etc).

Although I normally draft in my  notebook, this time I did not. And I didn’t use words from other poets as I often do — the words for this draft rose up to the page out of my scribbling and a line echoing in my head: Sir, you must know something of suffering.

I really wanted this poem to be about suffering, but as it skittered down the page it turned its back on suffering to explore themes of imperfection and longing. During revisions, I will need to figure out if both themes can coexist in this poem, or if one needs to be cut. I worked in couplets as I usually do when drafting; we’ll see if they stick. I’m also unsure of the ending which right now is tied up pretty tight but probably needs to be incomplete, unfinished, evocative.

Even so, I’ll leave you with a few lines from this draft: “This is how we meet each other, right Sir? // Headless and missing a limb, nearly / blind and tripping on a too-long leg, // the half-length of an arm / saying more about arms // than the intact limb ever could, absence / becoming presence?”

The syntax is a little too talky for me, but it’s draft with some energy behind it. I think I’ll try to revise toward the strange.

wordless wednesday: in which i ponder anew the question “is nothing sacred?” (and with apologies to Joan Didion)

this is what can happen if I leave the house... sigh

a word for the year

my fave part is the girl with birds and leaves in her wild hair

I’m taking a class from the poet Molly Fisk. The class is called “Getting Your Work Out,” and it has really helped me to establish a regular practice of sending my poems out into the world. I’m also friends with Molly on Facebook, which is a really good thing to be, because she’s always linking to really interesting articles and posing thought-provoking questions in her status updates.

A recent question was (I paraphrase) “What will be your word for the year in 2012?” When I read the question, the word persist immediately came to my lips.

persist (v) to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning; to remain unchanged or fixed in a specified character, condition, or position; to be insistent in the repetition or pressing of an utterance (as a question or an opinion). From the Latin per- thoroughly + sistere come to stand.

Yesterday, I woke up and I felt like making a collage. I’m not sure from whence this impulse came, but over time I’ve learned to follow such impulses. It was so fun to search through magazines and Pinterest boards looking for beautiful things to cut and paste. I’m usually drawn to images of sand, rock, and water; wide expanse, horizon, and sky (blame my homeland: the beautiful third coast of west Michigan). But yesterday I intuitively sought out images of locks and keys, doors, windows, gates, frames; in other words, thresholds, openings. And also creatures with wings: birds and moths; in other words, flight.

And the word persist wove its way into the collage, too.

I think I’ll hang the collage near my desk where it can serve as a reminder, an inspiration.

If you chose a word for the year, what would yours be?