Revision is the dirty little secret of the published poet. Most poems do not spring from a poet's mind fully realised. Think of writing a poem like brainstorming ideas for building something out of wood. If the creation process is like brainstorming, then revision is where you flesh-out the blueprints, gather the materials, and build the item. Many amateur poets end their relationship with a new poem as soon as they finish writing the last line.

Revision is what separates a serious poet from someone who writes Diary Entries with Line Breaks for the purposes of self-expression or catharsis.

The Purpose of Revision

When an editor once asked Oscar Wilde to make a change in one of his poems, Wilde replied "Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?"

Writing poetry is a process of discovery. Once immersed in the moment

Lateral Shifts

Look at your from a different angle - you aren't rewriting the poem, you're working to find the poem.

Never throw anything away. Keep a copy of each revision. That way you won't feel that anything is lost. Heck, be bold and completely change the ending of the poem. If the new ending doesn't work, save a copy and roll the version of the poem back to before you made the change.

Cut, Cut, Cut

A sculptor may tell you that to carve a statue of a lady all that's necessary is to chip away anything that isn't part of the finished sculpture. Easy, right?

The fastest and easiest way to begin revising is to start cutting away parts of the poem that don't work.

Revision vs. Rewriting

The Midas Touch

That great line that's remained for the past dozen revisions and that you've rested the success of the poem on: cut it. It has to go.

Cleverness can kill a poem. No one cares how smart you are.

When All Else Fails: Revision's Worst Case Scenario

Last resort: throw it away. Start a new poem.

If you're revising and revising and you can't figure out how to make a poem work, here are a few suggestions for less-painful revision:

• Shelve It
  Sometimes just putting a poem in a drawer for awhile and not looking at it can help. When you come back to it a week, a month, six months, a year later, you may look at it with a fresher view. Your increased skill through writing other poems may help you write this one better. There's no shame in retreat. You're not admitting defeat, just postponing the finished poem for a short while. It's better to take your time and create a great poem than to rush a shoddy one out the door due to your impatience.
• Shelve It. Then Rewrite It.
  This is a variation of the above where you put a poem away and start from scratch (at least a week or so later so the poem isn't quite as fresh in your mind). Try re-writing the poem completely from memory. Oftentimes you'll leave out the bits that aren't essential to the poem and you may also come up with a new idea, a new way to make the poem work. Don't fight the urge to add new things. Remember, you always have those old versions safe and sound.
• Change the Form of the Poem
  Did you write a sonnet? Try rewriting it as a villanelle. If you wrote the poem in an open form (i.e. free verse) then try writing in a closed or fixed form, rhyme scheme, etc.
• Change the Shape of the Poem
  Another way to alter the poem dramatically is to change the line length, stanza length, stanza breaks, punctuation, etc. By changing the shape of the poem you will be forced to change the words as well to make the new shape work. For more on the shape of a poem see the previous article in this series.

Are We There Yet?

The single most important aspect to revising a poem is knowing when to stop.

Old adage "A poem is never finished, merely abandoned."

However, you don't want to aimlessly tinker. If you find yourself making minor changes, changing it back, or otherwise just picking at your poem, just put it away. Call it 'done.'

This brings us to another quote from the emminently quotable Oscar Wilde:

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma.
In the afternoon I put it back in again.

Once Again, With Feeling

To re-cap: Revision is just another series of steps to making your poem better. Some of the ways in which you can revise a poem are:

• Excision: The most common form of revision - simply cut anything that is not essential to the heart of the poem.
• Collision: This is a specific kind of excision. Are there two lines or stanzas that are saying the same thing but in a different way? Try to compress the idea into a single line or stanza to tighten up your poem.
• Circumcision: Sometimes you'll find the true poem only after writing a few lines. Often you can improve a poem greatly by cutting off the first few lines. Remember the maxim: start in the middle of the action.
• Devision: Breaking up the form of the poem may reveal some of its structural flaws. Try breaking up lines into multiple stanzas to give your poem room to breathe. Even if you don't keep the new stanza divisions intact in the final draft it may be helpful to split the poem apart to get a better idea of how it works (or doesn't work).
• Circumscription: You may often find that a poem isn't working, but there's a core idea or image in the poem that does work - why not remove the useless bits of marble around the poem's core and build from the inside out?
• Evasion: Poets may not give this technique enough merit because it feels too much like a defeat - but it's better to put a poem away for awhile to work on another day rather than hack away at it uselessly. It'll still be there to revise another day.

Revision needn't be painful. If you change your way of thinking about writing poetry you can improve your poems and enhance your enjoyment of the process.

Be sure to share your revisions with us in our discussion forum or through our poetry contest.