Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The Midterm Poetry Revision
The assignment: From any of the four poems you’ve written for each of the four Weekly Writing assignments, choose one to revise.
Points: 40
Deadline: 9am, Monday, Week 6
Format and order: A single .doc or .rtf file. In your revision file, include the following:
1. First, your Revision Reflection. This is more in depth than the reflections you've been doing. Instructions are below.
2. Second, your final, revised poem
3. Following that, include the three Revision Experiments you did. Revision Experiments will be found below.
4. Following that, include other notes about and drafts of the poem, if any exist. If you did many drafts but have written over them so that now they are gone into Computer Land, don't worry about that, but make sure you have described your entire drafting process in the Reflection.
5. At the very end, please include the original version, the one you first turned in for the assignment, the one your group and I commented on.
What is a revision? In this class, a revision is a piece of writing that you’ve thought about, re-worked, re-made, and thought about some more until your head explodes. You probably have some changes that you know you want to make—things that have come up in your workshop discussion and from my feedback, so your revision will likely make those changes. To do this, you will put your poem through many drafts. But I would also like you to take this opportunity to enlarge your imagination of what your poem might be, and to deepen your idea of what and how the poem might mean. To this end, I ask you to conduct several experiments (See list below) with the material of your poem. Your revision might end up using a lot of the resulting material—or it might not. Either way, you’ll have made some discoveries about what’s possible.
You are trying to make your poem as good as possible. But what does “good” mean? We will have discovered some elements of good poetry in our reading and workshops. Among these are that the poem considers its audience, doesn’t waste words, considers the music of language, finds linebreaks, line-lengths, and a form that suits the material, doesn't oversentimentalize, and shows rather than tells. At the same time, you and the poem are probably creating your own standards as you go. That is, the more you work on the poem, the more you figure out what it wants to be, and the more you are able to make it be that.
Read this interview about revision: poet Donald Hall discusses his methods.
The Revision Experiments
Requirements: Everyone is required to do Experiment #1. For the other two experiments, choose whichever two you like from the remaining options.
As you conduct these experiments, keep notes about what you discovered. Did you like the results? Do you find anything in the results you want to use for your poem? What did you learn about your poem in particular or poetry in general? These notes will become part of your Revision Journal, Due Sunday, Feb 6.
Experiment #1 (required): Get beyond the known: At the end of your poem, write fifty more lines. Fill up page after page. Don’t think too hard. Let whatever comes up onto the page. If it starts to get weird, that’s ok. You’re trying to get past your conscious mind to a deeper level. What do you get to? Does the writing take any interesting turns? Do you find a new ending? Can any of the new lines or phrases be incorporated into your poem?
Choose any two of the following further experiments:
Experiment #2: Put your poem through its paces: Whatever shape and form your poem is, change it. For example, if it is in long lines, put it in short lines. If it is in short lines, put it in long lines. If it is in separate stanzas, put it in one long sequence. If it is in one long sequence, break it into two-line couplets or three-line tercets or four-line quatrains. Put the poem through several of these changes, studying it after each change to see what you discover. For example, often when I put a long-lined poem into short lines, it becomes suddenly obvious to me what words are excessive or unnecessary. I see where to pare down. When I break a poem into shorter stanzas, I get new ideas about how the logic of the poem is working, about what may be connected to what, and perhaps I'll get some ideas about how to re-order the material. When I see new words at the ends of the lines, I get new ideas about what reverberations or connotations might want to be emphasized.
As you put your poem through these changes, you may discover that your poem really wants to be in a different form. Or, you might make the various additions, shufflings, and edits you've discovered, and then put the poem back in its original form.
Experiment #3: Cut your poem radically, making it be about half as long. You can cut whole chunks, or just little bits here and there. What happens? Do some of the lines end up stronger? If now the poem is confusing, is it a confusing confusion or an intriguing and mysterious one? What do you learn by cutting so much? Realistically, how much can you cut from your poem?
Experiment #4: Write a version of your poem that's a very close imitation of one of the poems we've discussed or of one of the poems in Boisseau's chapter 10, "Finding the Poem." What does this add or subtract from your poem?
Experiment #5: Substituting Specifics: Read your piece carefully, hunting for every word or phrase that seems even the slightest bit general, or that you have even the slightest inclination to say more about. Look for those places where you may have been in a hurry during the early drafts, or where you may have given up in the frustration of trying to describe things accurately. Insert after every one of these, more detail, development, description, imagination--whatever is appropriate for the situation. As you do this, you may discover that you can cut out the original generality and substitute one of these other images. Or you may discover an idea or theme you didn't know was there. Or?
Experiment #6: Developing music and mood: Think of what sort of mood you’d like your poem to have. It could be silly, sad, sarcastic, happy, wistful, angry, etc. Or maybe your poem changes moods, starting out angry, ending up with acceptance, for example. Now write a version of your poem where instead of paying attention to the meaning of the words, you just pay attention to the sound of the words: string words together, any words, so that they make sounds that will correspond to the mood of your poem. This version of the poem might end up being nonsense, but maybe you’ll come up with some musical effects you can use.
Experiment #7: Cut adjectives and adverbs: Read through the poem and cut all the adjectives and adverbs. Where do you feel like you absolutely need one? Instead of replacing the adjective or adverb you used originally, write a simile or metaphor, or see if you can find a verb that conveys what you mean.
Experiment #8: Research an element of your piece: Maybe there's a subject in your story or poem that it might be interesting to know more about. If you're writing about a character who's having chemotherapy, it might to interesting to know more details about how chemotherapy works. Maybe there's a word in your poem that you could find out the etymology of (look in the Oxford English Dictionary--you can log in with a Seattle Public or King County library card number). Find out more about some element of your piece, and take copious notes. Can any of this information be fit in to your piece? Or, even if it can't be fit in, does it help you understand anything about what you're trying to do?
The Revision Reflection
Length: about 500 words, or about two word-processed double-spaced pages. It can be longer than this, but if you've done the work of revising, making many drafts and conducting the experiments, it will definitely not be shorter.
Format: Double-spaced.
Include the Reflection as the first element in your Revision document.
In the Reflection:
· Describe how you went about revising your poem: Why did you choose this poem to revise? Did you have particular goals in revising? What steps did you take to revise? How did you made decisions about each of your changes?
· Discuss how Boisseau’s ideas may have influenced your revision, and also about how the poems we've talked about in the Reading Discussions may have influenced your revision.
· Discuss the Revision experiments. What were your conclusions about each experiment? Did any of the experiments provide satisfying results? Did you learn anything about your poem from doing the experiments?
· If your poem uses unconventional elements of grammar or punctuation, explain your choices: How do you feel these unconventionalities contribute to the poem?
· Conclusions about your poem: As it stands now, how do you feel about it? If you had more time, would you work on it any more?
Grading of the Revision
Reflection, 5 points. See description above. The reflection describes your revision process detailing your experiments and decisions, showing you actively involved with every word of your piece; it shows how you have urged your piece to find its true being, meaning, language, tone, imagery, music, and form.
The depth of the experimentation, 15 points: The three experiments are included, and drafts are either included or described in your Reflection. The drafts and experiments show you working not only with small-scale decisions of word-choice and linebreak, but also with the larger development of theme or idea. The drafts show you discovering what the poem wants to be and do. Your whole revision package shows that you have deeply explored the possibilities of your work, tried this and that, adding material, taking material away, evaluating each change and deciding what to do with it. The revision shows that each word or sentence or image has been chosen, examined for its effect on the reader and on the piece as a whole.
The quality of the result, 15 points: The revision should show that you have worked to improve the quality of your writing, practicing to
· express yourself by means of image, and action, and the music of language rather than by generalization; to show rather than to tell;
· use the music of language to serve and further your meaning: use vowels, consonants, meter and rhyme purposefully and consciously;
· make every word count, and count double, using language compactly;
· eliminate clichés;
· find the form that best suits the meaning--the line-lengths and linebreaks, the presence or absence of rhyme, etc;
· if you're revising the ballad or quatrain poem, your revision meets the requirements of the form.
· clarify distracting confusions;
· create a strong opening and a strong ending;
· surprise yourself
· and last but not at all least, the revision shows that you have tried your best to be brilliant and original, to say new things in new ways, to get at complex meanings that you may not have known about when you started, which only literature is complex enough to express. Take risks with your writing!
Polish of surface, 5 points: The revision has been carefully proofread. It finds and corrects unintentional errors of grammar and syntax. The revision's appearance on the page is as you intend: all linebreaks, stanza breaks, page breaks are where you put them on purpose, not where a printer or computer program has. Every variation on conventional grammar and punctuation is explainable according to the demands of form and tone and voice and character. I recommend that if you are using intentional unconventional elements (for example sentence fragments, grammar errors, lack of punctuation, or partial punctuation), you discuss them in your commentary to let me know that they are deliberate. Otherwise, if they read to me like mistakes, I will assume they are mistakes, and grade accordingly.