30 poems in 30 Days: Review Your Old Work
September 19, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 16 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
Where Did You Come From?
Today’s missive is about review. Reviewing your old poems is an important way to grow as a poet. I began this project with the goal of producing a book of poetry. As part of that process I have been going over my old poems, trying to determine which ones to include and which to leave behind. Because I am not always the most organized of people, I keep finding more poems that I have scribbled down somewhere or saved in inappropriate places. At one point in my life, I had a file cabinet full of poems, but after a dozen moves over the past fifteen years, it has long ago disappeared. Many of those poems would be over twenty years old now. That’s a trip through time I would still like to take at some point.
As I read my old poems, I have varying reactions. Some poems I clearly remember writing, while others are a mystery to me. There are some that I know I’ll include, some that I am considering, and some that make me cringe just a little. When that happens, I try to tell myself that they can’t all be winners.
Overall, my old poems tell me about where I have come from. I have ventured in and out of poetry over the years, and only this year, as 40 loomed, have I started to feel a sense of urgency like I felt in my twenties. My old poems definitely show signs of their age, at least to me. I can almost immediately see the difference in life experience between then and now. That doesn’t make the old poems bad, just different.
In reviewing my more recent work, I can spot a certain narrowing of focus. My life is spent in hotels, offices, hospitals and on the road between them. These are the places where the events of my life happen, and it shows in my new work. While I like many of the new poems, I feel as if my poetic world has gotten a bit too small, and I need to open it up again. This 30 day project is helping with that.
I don’t have specific advice for how you should review your old work. I can tell you that the process isn’t about editing (though you are free to edit). It is about assessment and growth. By reviewing your old poetry, it is possible to spot patterns and habits that you may want to break or bring back. You can also track changes in your point of view. If nothing else, reading your old work is an interesting personal journey, and one that I suggest you take at some point.
On a related note, we’ve reached the halfway point in our 30 Poems in 30 Days project. Since we have reached the midpoint in this particular journey, I feel as if it is time for some feedback. I have questions, oh so many questions. For the sake of fun, I have created a list poem of sorts to ask these questions.
How am I doing?
How are the topics?
How are the lengths?
What are the weaknesses?
What are the strengths?
Do you want more forms?
Do you want more history?
Do you want more definitions?
Did I leave to much mystery?
What is it, dear reader that you want to know?
Is there a direction you’d like to go?
Is there a poet, you’d like to promote?
A hard working scribe who is worthy of note?
I’m open to thoughts
I am willing to change
I just want your feedback
No matter how strange
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Revisit one of the first fifteen assignments, perhaps one you especially liked or one you had trouble with, and write another poem following those same directions. Post it here and be sure to tell us what day’s assignment you used.
Today’s Recommended Poet
Steve Fellner’s first book of poetry, Blind Date With Cavafy
Poetry On the Web
Reviews followed by Desperate Calls and Epiphanies
An Interview followed by God in a Box
The topics are great. At first I thought it was a snap, but as we have moved into the current topic, the assignments have become more complex. I might like to see discussion of post-modern, reconstruction, deconstruction — I’m weak in contemporary thought, a slave to the old masters. Sorry gals, I’m a Frost fan. Poets are a persnickety bunch; we love each other dearly, but we’re as gnarly as old maids, Steve Brooks says it best in his song Everette — Poets drink, and poets smoke,poets live life on the brink, cause that’s what poets do. Well, I’ve long since quit the drinking and smoking but life on the brink may still be a good call.
Suggested Poets, Chris Ellery, Angelo State University, Professor of English Literature and fellow of Middle Eastern Literature, short stories and poetry, Syria, and Dennis Patrick Slattery Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. I have a review of Ellery, All This Light We Live In, in a past newsletter and I am working on one for Slattery’s Twisted Sky for Stephanie Pope’s mythopoetry. I don’t think they are online. Another is Ric Williams, Editor Austin Chronicles, I think some of his are on line, his latest work, The Secret of God.
John: I’m very happy with the way you’ve been doing this. Rather than suggest topics, I’m content to see what you come up with; I like surprises, lol.
I do have poets to suggest, though, and a litte axe to grind. On or off line there is such an absence of awareness of Australian poets, one might almost think there was no such animal! Except perhaps for Les Murray, who’s not one of my favourites (though his early work was lovely).
There are many wonderful Aussie poets whose work can’t be found on the internet. Of those who are Google-able, the ones I most admire include Dorothy Porter http://www.lyrikline.org/index.php?id=162&L=1&author=dp00&show=Poems&cHash=ff430d184e Alison Croggon http://www.alisoncroggon.com/poetry/
John Kinsella http://jacketmagazine.com/27/kins-g.html
Eric Beach http://www.the-write-stuff.com.au/archives/vol-2/index.html
Connie: I am for the most part very keen on Frost!
Oh, the Alison Croggon link above is a bit indirect. Once there you need to click on Writings.
Say, you know, I have felt the same way about Texas poets. We get little aclaim on the international scene, with the exception of Naomi Nye. We have a wonderful poet for the Texas Laureate this year, Larry D. Thomas. And there is a sore lack of acknowledged female poets in Texas. Kathleen Romana in Austin is one of those.
I’m using the imagist assignment. I just really like working with imagery and I am responding to one of the poems.
Rosemary
When I read her poems
I feel Oz turning into summer behind her words
The Eucalyptus greening, if it does, Kuala babies
Scrambling among the leaves, butterflies and blue
Frogs, dust rising from the cracked earth of the
Outback, her footprints on the beach white sand
Churning waves beating down the barrier reef
And the smell of the ocean in her hair
Love leaks from her pen across the pages
Turning ages into letters that spell adventure
Laughter, and always, the wisdom of one who
Knows more than the text reveals
Rosemary grows by my front door
One touch and its perfume clings
To my fingertips, lingers
Inside
My
Heart
I’ve been following along doing most of the challenges.
You’re doing great, for depth and pointing to samples and poets to read. The detail of question and topics has been interesting. Length is good for web. The more closed-ended the better. For example, an elegy has a traditional meter of such and such gives something concrete to work against. Forms are good, or constraints and idea of what the target is.
This is one of my recently old poems ( written in June 2007). I hope to get some suggestions from the peers on this site.
Waves
——-
A roaring sea and a starlit sky
We were there just walking by
The waves go back and forth
Bringing back the memories we hold
Some we love and some we loathe.
Walking ashore in the shallow waters
We leave no trace and have no leads
Just as we want to forget the past
And explore the unknown vast.
Some stay calm living the moment
Few share to spread the joy
And some search for a spot
Where their memories sank.
Each time the waves wash the shore
They leave a fresh canvas to dabble with
We make our momentary mark
And in no time it is lost in the dark.
A roaring sea and a starlit sky
We were there just walking by.
John, I think that what you have been doing is fine just the way it is. It’s one of the reasons for people to write using someone else’s cues – to open up our own poetic worlds. Being so badly behind, I confess the structural ones are feeling a little brutal. I have a poem which I am not happy with, which could be posted for both the repition and the 2 stanza meter + unmetered, but it doesn’t really want to be either of them.
But when you push your own boundaries, even if not successfully, it can only help you as a writer.
I might have to catch up with bloody awful poems, but I’ll know why they are awful and I can then decide whether the goals were something I’d like to improve on or something I never want to do again.
Dear Connie: Thanks for this lovely poem, which is of course very sweet to me. In most of my homes – though not the present one as it happens – I have had rosemary growing, a tradition started by my parents when I was little. It’s nice to know that now you have it for me. No, the eucalypts don’t green in spring; they are green all year, a dull greyish-green or sometimes blueish-green. And koalas move rather slowly as a rule. And our frogs aren’t blue; where I live they are bright green. But we do have blue butterflies! And all these inaccuracies are to me part of the charm of the poem, expressing your dreams of a place you’ve never seen with all its imagined exotica.
Dear All: Connie and I are dear friends though we live so far apart. I have visited her home in Texas but so far she hasn’t fulfilled her dream of coming to Australia. One of many reasons to be grateful to John for this project is the opportunity for our increased interaction with each other.
As for me, I’m a bit fluey at present, so am slowing the pace of my participation here. Just keep watching all these spaces for my catchings-up along with cerebralmum’s!
Trinath: “A roaring sea and a starlit sky” engaged me immediately, and I love the refrain feeling of repeating your opening couplet at the end of the poem. However, for me sensual images work better in poetry than philosophising, so I like “Walking ashore in the shallow waters / We leave no trace” better than most other lines because I can visualise it and because the philosophising is subtle. I don’t think you need to say more to make that point. Also I think rhyming can be dangerous because of having to then fit the words to the rhyme scheme. Dispensing with rhyme can leave us freer to say what we want, and to cut out anything extraneous. Nevertheless, you create an atmosphere!
Trinath – I agree with Rosemary. My favourite line is “where their memories sank”.
Thank you Rosemary and cerebralmum for your suggestions. Yes Rosemary I agree that sticking to rhyme will make us less free. And thanks once again.Here is another poem of mine for peer review….
Pharaoh’s Dream
——————
Sitting high and powerful, defiant and condescending
Is the chosen one, the pharaoh.
The absolute, the ruler from heaven; as the world calls
And obediently at his feet it falls
He dreamt for a mark of his glory
A one of its kind, magnificent and grand
A monument to mark his rule of this land
Years and Years of toiling in the desert sun
Realizing someone else’s dream
They remained occupied
Until one day when the glory was out of its hide
It looked sturdy and magnificent
Built With their flesh and blood
The symbol of glory would sure leave a mark
Just different one in each heart
The active years of their lives spent
They had no emotions to vent
The unsung heroes never again thought
What havoc to them, the pharaoh’s dream has brought
Realizing they wont be remembered for long
They lived along singing the glory
Forgetting the mark it made
And waiting for the wounds to fade.
Dear Trinath, I think you would find you learn heaps by doing the daily assignments for “30 poems in 30 days”. They are so varied, addressing different aspects of the craft, that just the doing is instructive; also people would probably be moved to comment on those efforts.
John’s suggestion about reviewing old work was, I think, really meant for us to go back over our own work and notice what that tells us about our development, and to do so at the halfway mark of our “30 days” project. You could start now; there is no rule about all starting at the same time.
Can’t access Fellner’s “Desperate Calls” and “Epiphanies” – but the very engaging “God in a Box” is enough to show me what you mean – and the interview is wonderful. I’m going to recommend it to other writers!
Hi Trinath — I have been looking at your waves, I love this imagery, and find nothing major to impede it’s meaning, but as you asked, I will make some suggestions — the main thing about them is to maintain your own voice in spite of suggestions — as I said earlier, sometimes less is more, so honing the words, cutting back on the verbage I think would improve your poem, but on the other hand, I don’t know what your intention is, so its hard to say. Also, when I play with the poem I am struggeling with the tense, it seems to shift.
Your Verse:
A roaring sea and a starlit sky
We were there just walking by
The waves go back and forth
Bringing back the memories we hold
Some we love and some we loathe.
Maybe try something like this (you get internal rhyme rather than end stoppedl)
A roaring sea, the sky, starlit
We were just there, walking by
Like the waves, back and forth
etc.
Walking ashore in shallow waters
We left no trace, no leads
Your verse:
Each time the waves wash the shore
They leave a fresh canvas to dabble with
Suggestion:
Waves washed the shore
Leaving a fresh canvas
We dabble
Anyway, It’s all relative. I just find that by cutting out the non-essential, I have a bolder verse.
Hi folks. I liked the experience of meditating before writing, so I have done that again – in a different location, with very different results. Is seems to me the exercises I’ve done so far have produced some freeing up!
THE MEDITATION
Let there be silence
let there be darkness
and in that darkness peace
and in that silence peace
no word
no light
All Void
the Nothing.
In that nothing
what is the something that observes
the being of nothing
the No Thing?
Upon this question
my eyes open
to observe the world
of sight and sound.
My gaze falls immediately
on a tree, feathery acacia
fluttering in the breeze,
leaves reaching sideways
in clumps as flat as plates
but moving, rippling.
The tall fronds of the palm beyond it
prance and bow.
And noises resume.
Cars on the road over there
changing speed around the bend.
A man’s voice talking
as he strolls,
tiny phone cupped to his ear.
The sudden loud tick of my watch.
Anonymous insects buzzing.
Well, I did post my contribution here, but it hasn’t shown up yet. I’ll resist for a day or two the temptation to repost – as that sometimes results in two copies going up! If anyone’s impatient to see it, click on my name to see my MySpace profile; it’s in that blog as well.
Well, I did post my contribution here, but it hasn’t shown up yet. I’ll resist for a day or two the temptation to repost – as that sometimes results in two copies going up! If anyone’s impatient to see it, click on my name to see my MySpace profile; it’s in that blog as well.
– Rescued!
Sorry, poetry for some reason gives my spam filter fits.
John
Well, quite right too. Very subversive, disreputable stuff, poetry … one hopes.
Thanks for the rescue. xx
[...] 30 poems in 30 Days: Review Your Old Work [...]
Your Paper
Whoever you are,
your paper landed by my doorstep today,
all wrapped up in anonymous plastic,
full of tidbits on personal investing,
with an interesting wine column written for laymen,
and with a comprehensive breakdown
of the summer movies.
The lead article announced the four agents of change
in this election season,
like apocalyptic horsemen but in a mildly optimistic way,
with a four-spread picture to bring it home:
three fat white men,
jovial and apple-cheeked as the Brady brunch,
and Barack Obama in the bottom right corner,
looking cross and vaguely ashamed
from beneath the fold.
I didn’t want your paper
but I read it straight through,
from the cover article on union regulations
to the end page piece about how Bernake’s tone
might signify the end of Fed rate cuts,
partly because my paper never came
but also, in a sense, because it was yours,
because you were denied it,
and because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful
for something you may have loved.
Still.
I hope you got my paper instead.
I really do.
I hope you were puzzled by the mix up,
the way I was, at first flipping between the pages
in a state of frank disbelief,
always expecting the next fold to reveal
the familiar font and column width,
and the viewpoints that assure you
that you are part of something worthwhile,
and underappreciated, and smart.
I hope you read it through, too,
from the cover article on middle school testing
to the tiny section buried beneath the editorials
called This Rural Life,
almost unnoticeable but so good,
a scant two or three paragraphs at most
and only printed one day a week,
just a blurb in which someone who has given up
the bluster and complications of the city expounds,
in a quiet way, about the awe one feels
upon waking up on a farm,
or finding a dead sparrow by the lake.
Saul Nadatas last blog post..Your Paper (redux)