Where Bodies are Buried and Islands Connect: Thoughts on Revising Poetry

A friend who is usually a prose writer asked me recently how to edit a poem. I’ve been writing poetry for years, but how do I do that thing? Good question.Let’s be clear. I’m talking about a free-form poem. Traditional forms have a structure that provides scaffolding for revision. Free-form means the poet must create both a body that breathes and a heart that beats in time with the poem’s intention. What should this body look like? How should it sound when it speaks? How should it move on the page?

Okay, now I have intimidated myself. But my friend is waiting, draft in hand. So, what can I say, based on my own experience, that might be of help?

Here’s what I do. First, I read my draft aloud to myself. I want to hear whether the words have music, whether the music has meaning, and whether the meaning touches me. If the poem has a pulse, I proceed.

But where is the pulse located? If some part of a poem stands out—a line or an image that sings strangely in an otherwise flat landscape—I will likely move that part to the top of the poem. I try to never be afraid of major excisions. I discard more than I save.

When I edit a poem, I try to achieve a combination and arrangement of sound and image, word line and space, that will best express my intention. How does this work in practice?

The body of a poem may be squat or sturdy, slender or curvy; its parts may be compact or scattered; they may be easy on the eye or not—but what to say about the spaces? Oceans of white space make a poem into an island, or an archipelago. In free-form, the poet controls the ocean; she owns the islands, word, line and image; she can summon both sound and sense in pursuit of an idea, an emotion, a shared experience. Space also speaks. Listen to the space.

In free-form, all choices are possible: lovers’ couplets, or regular, reasonable stanzas;  thoughtful fragments or (apparent) disorder—what do meaning and emotion suggest? What serves? The answer may not be obvious. Disorder can sometimes be best expressed as tension between parts.

I use rhyme a lot: slant, internal, organic rhyme to pull scattered thoughts together; sonic effects like assonance and alliteration to direct the ear toward meaning. Sound should serve the poem, either subtly or with more force. Sounds are seductive. I strive always to make sound serve meaning, to not get carried away with the music - but music also has force.

The poetic line is - usually - broken, but where to make the break? Clever fractures can give a single line discrete meaning, while keeping it connected to its siblings on either side. I will break a line for suspense, for tension, to preserve or confound expectation, to make a joke, or to make music—this is not an exhaustive list. To own the poem, be fine with the possibility of breaking every part every which way. Spoiler alert: you will never be done with this process.

Does the poem’s imagery have internal logic? Can I see the image in my mind’s eye? If I say my poem is a body, and then I say my poem is an island—can I bring these two images together in the manner of John Donne? No poem is entire unto itself, and no poetic element should resemble a severed limb. Unless that’s the point.

I read and read again. Where does the poem breathe—and where do I? What sounds awkward? If the ending doesn’t please, if it doesn’t punch, perhaps I don’t have an ending yet. I may try reading the poem backwards. Could be that my lines, or my stanzas, are in the wrong order. On the line between concision and confusion, I take out every word that’s not essential. Some, I put back. I keep what feels original, what shocks and surprises, what takes the breath away—

What is my purpose? On the exhale, only to connect.

Breakfast for the Birds

I'm excited to announce that my poetry collection from Finishing Line Press, Breakfast for the Birds, is coming out this spring. You have all been a part of the journey that this book represents. Thank you! I hope you will consider buying a copy. If you do, I will send you a signed bookplate.

Advance sales are open now - and vital to secure the print run:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/breakfast-for-the-birds-by-jude-marr/ 

The volume will ship on March 17th, 2017.

Please note that if you place your order during the pre-publishing period (before January 27th), shipping is only $2.99 per copy.                                          

Tell your friends!

Love and Death in Exam Week

A few weeks ago, in Los Angeles, I saw a show about death. A musical. A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, slick and witty as Broadway on tour can be, but in the end heartless. In truth, the Broadway slickness is starting to wear thin. The score is unmemorable. The British accents not quite. I couldn’t banish the memory of the much funnier old British movie made from the same novel—Kind Hearts and Coronets. Well worth seeing.

I’m not sorry I went to see Gentleman’s Guide, though. I love to be inside any theater. The smell of the greasepaint may be a thing of the past, but there is still magic inside theatrical walls. And yes, a musical touring company at the Ahmanson is about as far from experimental as it’s possible to get—but I love the plush, the hush, the scent of gin at intermission, and the sentimental sense of being a part of something old, inclusive, artful and always—even at the Ahmanson—transgressive.

Even so, I wish I could have stayed in Los Angeles long enough to see the next show at the same theater—Suzan Lori Parks’ much more obviously impactful Father Comes Home from the Wars. I taught this text a few years ago—and showed a tiny excerpt that’s on YouTube—but I’ve always wanted to see it staged. Park’s play is also about death—but then I’m tempted to ask, what isn’t? Love and death. Life and death. The cruelty of death in life.

I’m having these thoughts as I contemplate the final stages of making over my drama workshop scenes of love and death into a short play. It seems I am writing a poem for the stage. Spare. Bare. Bones. I hope I find enough sinew to hold the thing together. But then, I’m tempted to ask, when is this not the case?

Pass the gin.

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Performance?

The drama (workshop) continues.

For our second exercise, we grapple with the concept of cruelty, en façon d’Artaud. Our mission: to assault the audience, uncover the subconscious—theirs? ours? we are both—and avoid the bourgeois.

First confession. I find the bourgeois strangely alluring. Hey ho.

This time around, we appear in our own scenes, and I screw up royally—words and intention hammered by my ham-fisted handling of stage business undertaken with script in hand—

Second confession. I could have learned my lines—my lines—and avoided some of this embarrassment, not least the part where my aging eyes fail to focus. Off the book is on the ball.

My scene is not the worst thing I’ve ever written. The intention, at least, feels right. Cliché to combat the bourgeois; an emphasis on the visual; an attempt to shock—could I turn this into a series of interlocking scenes with different combinations of characters?

Daniel, playing HE to my SHE, proves again that he’s a man who can act.

Josie wins the night with a brilliant piece combining her talents for both page and stage. She’s on this. Everyone is doing interesting work—

Third confession. I long for a chance to perform again, to redeem myself—and yet, again, I am not cast. I get it, I do—and consciously, I am fine with my featured role. But subconsciously? For sure, I don’t want to be pitied or pandered to. I just want to be both them and us—

Or could it be that, by screwing up, I turned an okay scene into the biggest assault of the night?

Next week, love. 

Oh, Becket, Where Art Thou?

I’m feeling more than usually European these days. For my drama workshop, I have to read  Camus, Artaud, Durrenmatt—which takes me back to a time long ago, when I fell in love with theater and read every play, indiscriminately. I wanted to act. I wanted to find another character for myself. Neither venture was a success—not least because I understood nothing of what I read or experienced. Nothing important, that is.

Has anything changed? Well, I’m much better now at playing the part I draft for myself every day. That often feels like my life’s work. Otherwise, I put words on the page and send those pages flying out into the world, intending to connect. Good intentions. Hell.

I took another drama workshop a couple of years ago, during which I wrote a three-act play that failed to be either realistic or free from the constraints of realism. My head was filled with visions of Arthur Miller and his cohort, I guess. I made up for any sense of unease by trying to be funny.

For this workshop, I have written a three-page scene about two strangers who meet and fail to connect. I see and hear the scene as brush strokes on a blank canvas. I was thrilled when Dr. Stetco said my scene was very cool. Less is more. (I'm still trying to be funny.)

I’m not an actor, but I think of myself as a performer: I love to read my own work, love to have an audience. Even so, when I read in Louisiana, or in Georgia where I lived for four years, or even in New York City, I am always aware of my stranger status. My voice gives me away, every time. Now I am back in theater again, and I realize that, sweet as my cohort is, they likely won’t think to cast me. I don’t sound right, I don’t look right either, to play an American character.

To be in a theater feels like coming home. To be only in the auditorium, looking at the stage, feels like a metaphor too close to home. My default is angst.

When i was an undergraduate, i directed three plays. The first and most tragic of these was Waiting for Godot. I did not direct well and still cringe to think about that production, but Beckett's play continues to draw me. Some days I am Estragon, and some days I am Vladimir. How absurd. But surely not more so than waiting for Trump to be President?

Teacher, Writer, Editor

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