Editing-5 minute prose read

This is a prose bit on the wacky part of creating a poem and then the time consuming and patient process of editing.

                                                               Editing

         The more time I spend time with poetry, the more it changes into several different kinds of time.  All of these various types of time begin with sitting still and quiet long enough for a poem to arrive.  Or maybe a jolt starts it and I am groping for my pen the way I grope for my coffee after waking up.  After all, I began drinking coffee as a freshman in high school in Holland, along with every other kid.  It was a small but strong cup of coffee with "slagroom", or whipped cream.  In the window of the tiny kiosk I could see a thin, white line across my upper lip and I hoped I would have a mustache one day.  But I digress, which is exactly what any good poem is, pure digression.  A poet finds herself looking at all this, the stuff we look at everyday but then she sees that and when that happens, this is never the same and that, in a nutshell is how poetry works, at least for me.

	Once the creative part is done, I emerge from my hard stare at something I was sure I saw but is fading quickly.  I take a quick look in my small notebook and say, “Huh”.  That is because I often don’t know what I am looking at.  It may look preposterous and I think to myself, not one person in this world will understand this, so what is the point of it?

         Usually, within a week I will revisit the scene to see if anything has improved.  Was that thing I wrote simply a pig’s breakfast (dreadful) or not?  In the days following the poem, I try to translate it into something comprehensible.  It’s almost always at this point that the thing dies or shows a sign of life.  If it’s not translatable, then I probably missed the reason I felt compelled to write it down.  Another swing and a miss, just like baseball, but the batting average of a decent poem even making first base, to attempted swings is very low, in my league anyway.  I remember earlier this year, in Mexico, I was trying to repair a floatable pool toy but the holes were in places I could not repair and it remained a black and white, flat plastic killer shark with several leaks somewhere where the dorsal fin connected to the body. Unrepairable, that's what you are and so are most poems begun by me, a 180 batting average, at best.

	Trying to resuscitate a poem that is looking at the wrong thing is just like that flat black shark.  Or maybe it was looking at the right thing but in the wrong way.  If I were to change the point of view, it might work.   Or move a phrase around, cut some words, or change the tense, make everything plural.  Somewhere in this frantic combat medic mode you realize the thing has been on life support too long already.  You start looking at it like a car on its way to the scrap yard and you say to yourself, "I think I can use that bumper somewhere."  And so, some part of the thing may live on in a line somewhere else.

	I often wonder what portion of my time is spent in the act of writing a poem compared to all the rest of it?  I think it’s a minimum of ten to one and that’s if the poem is hitting all the marks, which means it knows what it’s about and says it concisely.  I have strict rules.  Although I am not against trying to fill up the tear ducts, I can’t allow any pulling of heart strings.  They must be pulled by the reader, otherwise they feel manipulated.  It, the poem, cannot pile up too many screwy phrases, one after the other.  The reader will rebel and say, “You lost me and I don’t like being left behind.  I want to be in on everything but don't pander to me.” 

         This then, is the line a good poem must walk and it begins to take shape during editing.  It is during editing that I can listen most carefully to what it was trying to say during its creation.  Without editing, they would be gibberish to most readers.

         Another strict rule of mine and a little bit off the editing topic:  I feel compelled to first create a solid ground and then make it a common ground.  For me, this is the trickiest section and perhaps the most important, because, if I can establish it correctly, then I feel free to depart from the ground and into the exciting part, the part that woke me up and made me think that this thing was worth sharing.  I cannot stress enough the importance of building the common ground.  From that shared space of trust, we can then take the flight that leaves all the tedium behind, taking us on a shared, short trip.

          It's all about the trust.  The reader should have faith that I am not going to take them somewhere peculiar and leave them there.  And further, once I make them wade through bizarre phrases and sentences that are stretched and strained way beyond normal, it should be well worth all that.  A poet with any sense of decency must endeavor to leave their reader with a gift because the reader has done us a kindness that must be repaid.  We, the poets, offer humor, insight, beauty, and emotional impact, which are gifts we have labored to create.

         How can I be sure the editing is done?  The certainty usually comes all of a sudden, when I feel like I’m tampering or intruding on something that would prefer that I mind my own business.  I remember my sons treating me the same way.  They would say something like, “I got this, Dad.  I’ll let you know if I need help.”  And I would go and make a cup of coffee and nurse my slightly bruised ego that will transform soon enough into the good kind of pride.