Hi all! I hope you’re enjoying spring!
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The Last Step!
In the first and second part of this series on poetry revision techniques, I wrote about the first 5 steps I usually take when I embark on revising a poem:
Identifying the thesis of a poem,
determining where the writing ends and the poem begins,
applying the two tools of “showing” and “telling”,
ensuring a consistent “world” across the poem, and
examining the power held by the poem’s title.
Today I’ll detail the sixth and last big step I usually take in poetry revision: examining intentions.
I’ve led a few workshops that focus on this, and I had the honor of writing a guest blog post on intentionality over at TrishHopkinson.com (by the way, if you’re not familiar with her website, it’s a hub of amazing writing resources).
I won’t be repeating what I said there—I’ll just give a quick summary, and then get into an example.
For Revision Only
I created the above chart to act as a kind of checklist for intentions—feel free to also download the PDF and share it. It’s a simple tool for reminding ourselves to examine what we’ve consciously or unconsciously chosen to do in our poem, and whether those choices align with our intentions for the poem.
This chart is intended for use in the revision phase rather than the drafting phase. Longtime readers will know that I’m super interested in exploration, experimentation, and surprising myself during the writing process—so I generally put no limits, expectations, or requirements on my first drafts.
But when I’ve written something I’m excited about, and which I’d like to hone, I check what I’ve been intentional about—and what I haven’t.
Below, I unpack an example of this process using a poem I wrote about my health anxiety and distrust for doctors which was published in the Winter 2021 issue of Lily Poetry Review. I drafted it on a 1.5-hr long bus commute (with my eyes closed to avoid motion sickness!).
Here’s that first draft:
hypochondria I think there is a bird lodged in my throat. Down at the bottom, to the right, and her neck angles up toward my right ear, which hurts when I put headphones on. I can only speak if I do it the right way, by giving her space. The doctors and nurses laughed when I said, see me please, see my bird, and they wrote, "watch out for her." I do have a bird. When I exercise I sing through her body as though through a drum. Her eye is beneath my chin, nestled deep, fixing its stare on my bone, and on the setting of my jaw. She can hear everything, encoding, decoding, shelling, de-shelling, removing protections. When she goes I'm afraid I will be ripped from the inside, while the doctors and nurses laugh, because I have only one life and they will find it funny that I've lost it, I the backsplash of an overeager faucet; no one misses the droplets that don't go where they were aimed. Ceramic tiles were installed so the water won't spoil the wall, etc. And the bird will not be caught. She'll make it pretty far, only heard when speaking under the breath, only touched when feeling inside the chest.
Here’s the revised, published version:
Hypochondria There's a bird caught in my throat. Down at the bottom, to the right, and her neck angles up toward my ear, which hurts when I put head- phones on. I can only speak if I give her space. The doctors and nurses laugh when I say, Do you see me? Do you see my bird? They tell each other "watch out for her." But I do have a bird. When I exercise, air sings through my body as if through a drum. Her eye is beneath my chin, and fixes its stare on the setting of my jaw. She hears everything I think and chew. When she finally goes, I'll be ripped from the inside while the doctors and nurses laugh because I had one life and they'll think it's funny I lost it. And the bird will not be caught. She'll make it pretty far. Watch out for her.
Below are all the changes I made to this poem by examining my intentions—the header(s) is/are taken from the headers on the intentions chart.
Mystery, Rhetoric, Character, Voice
In the first draft, the very first line betrays uncertainty, or mystery—something that we don’t know. I didn’t intend to be uncertain or mysterious—I intended for the poem to evoke the dead certainty that I feel when I’m experiencing health anxiety. So I decided I needed to use rhetoric—a kind of hyperbole, to be more declarative and firm.
It also felt more poetic to say there was definitely a bird in my throat—it evokes a little magical realism, and the metaphor extends throughout the poem.
In choosing to make the first line declarative rather than hesitant, I was molding the speaker—the character and voice of that first-person narrator. It was important to me to get the reader to take the side of the narrator rather than of the doctors and nurses—because truly, I was trying to evoke a certain us-vs-them mentality and I wanted to make the reader my ally.
Story, Time
In the first verse, I had the doctors and nurses only write a note saying “watch out for her”—whereas my intention was to portray a more visceral experience of being bullied or ganged up on. To make this more clear, I changed it to them saying that line to each other.
Also, time-wise, I initially had them doing this in the past tense. I changed it to the present tense, to once again enhance that experience, and to clearly portray their dismissal of me as a continuous event.
I changed the line beginning “When she goes” to “When she finally goes” to help lend the story more of that longevity, that ongoingness which I wanted to emphasize.
Sound
Nearly always—but especially with poems that address painful or scary topics—I like to use sonic devices; to wield the beauty of sound and rhythm as a cushion against painful content. So I wanted to highlight the pretty sounds—the sonic devices like alliteration and other melodic or rhythmic effects. I went through and found them, and helped them stand out more strongly.
In the first line, I contracted “There is” to the more certain, more colloquial “There’s” which also gave me a different rhythmic pattern.
I shortened the line “I can only speak if I do it the right way, by giving her space” to the more punchy, less morally complex, and more certain “I can only speak if I give her space,” giving those sp— words their moment in the sun.
I changed the clunky “as though through” to a smoother “as if through.”
In the second verse, I was careful to maintain a pair of near-rhymes which pleased me—drum and chin. I wanted more of this sonorousness so I helped a second pair come through by changing the really long line “She can hear everything, encoding, decoding, shelling, de-shelling, removing protections” to simply “She hears everything I think and chew”. This wasn’t only better because it was shorter, but because I now had a second sonorous pair—“jaw” and “chew.”
For the ending, I wanted to wallop the reader with something catchy that would sound strongly-woven—hence the sonic pair far and her.
Tone, Language, Emotion
In the third verse of the first draft, I had a lot of commas, and the second half of it felt a little like a ramble—like I was searching for how to say something. I realized the tone I wanted to have and the emotion I wanted to portray in this verse was of a subtle but marked panic. So I took out the extra stuff and focused on the feared event I was painting—the bird leaving—and decided that the best way to signal that tinge of panic was to remove all the commas and have it be a run-on sentence.
I also wanted to once again use language that was more colloquial, so I contracted I will and they will.
I wanted this verse to feel like I was speaking quickly, getting it all out in one near-panicky breath.
Consistency
My intention was for this particular poem to feel like it circled back and tied off with a bow, so to speak—to have consistency and be almost academic in its presentation of the facts and in the format—presenting a catalogue of symptoms and using (however approximately) an introduction, exposition, and conclusion.
Why? To aid in the plea which is the thesis of the poem: Take me seriously!!!
I noticed that in the first draft I did have a repetition of “watch out for her,” but it was buried in a bunch of rambling statements. When I revised it, I pulled this forward and cut the other stuff, setting it as a centerpiece.
Form
The poem is a prose-poem, but I intended the narrative to whittle itself to a point, to grow towards a very firm, very uncluttered resolution. I wanted it to feel like the last word in an argument—I wanted the narrator to sound like they knew exactly what they were talking about.
So I chose to make the ending get more compact on the page—I added line breaks.
The Rest
Place? Nah, I’m okay with there being no particular place this is happening in, so nothing needs to be described. It’s enough that there’s a hint of a hospital at least partly.
Experimentation—I’m okay with this poem not being very experimental, apart from a bit of magical realism.
Imagery—I’m happy with the extended metaphor of the bird, and the descriptions of how she affects my body. I don’t feel like I need more imagery.
Harm & Privilege—there is potentially triggering material, but the title “Hypochondria” is doing double duty here—it’s contextualizing the poem immediately in health anxiety, and it’s also signalling to the reader, “move on if you’d rather not encounter this topic.”
And because I myself do have a problem with medical anxiety and hypochondria (as well as—and separately—a history of not being believed by medical professionals when I had genuine medical issues), I can feel pretty safe that I’m not appropriating other’s experience in a problematic way.
Class privilege—yes, this poem demonstrates some class privilege. As wary of doctors as I may be, I’m lucky to even have access to them; there are people who do not. It’s good to be fully aware of this. I can make a mental note not to read this particular poem in front of an audience of folks whom I know struggle with lack of basic access to doctors or healthcare.
Challenge:
Choose a poem you’ve written—in any state of revision, from first draft to completed.
Using the intentions chart, check in with yourself about each aspect of intentionality. See if there are areas you could enhance or strengthen, which you hadn’t thought about.
Even if you feel good about your poem being its strongest and most intentional self, the process of checking will help you become more familiar with your poem and form a stronger relationship with its message.
Have a beautiful May! Don’t forget I do have an online workshop coming up on May 14—Bridging the Strange and Familiar: Practical Approaches for Poets.