Poetic Revision Quotes

The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.

The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.

One of the things women poets have been engaged in - among the other things they've been doing - is revising parts of the poetic self. Re-examining notions of the authority within the poem, and of the poem.

I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.

So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it.

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.

I redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.