For me, it starts with sitting down and saying, “I’m going to write a poem.” If I sound overconfident, I’m not. I can easily write something that resembles a poem, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good poem. It doesn’t even mean it’s a poem that might have promise. It’s just words formed into what looks like a poem.

I like to start with pen and notebook. Most anything else I write, I would rather type from the get go. But with poetry, I like the space that writing long hand gives me. I need that extra time to think and breathe. That’s what poetry does for me, anyway, whether writing or reading – it gives me time to slow down and pay attention to the world around me, or to imagine the world as another poet sees it and bring that into my own experience.

If I’m lucky, the words I write hold promise. At the very least there might be a phrase or two that piques my interest and develops into something more. I might tweak it by scribbling out some words or add other words or phrases that might work better. Most of the time, though, I close the notebook and don’t look at the poem for a couple of weeks.

My poets’ group meets once a month, so about a week before, I look over what I’ve written in the past month and pick something that I think is worth presenting. Then I type it into my computer, so I can have a clean, legible copy to pass out to the group. I generally change things as I type. But even then, after it’s all typed I’ll go through it yet again.

When I revise, I look for some of the obvious things – misspelled words or words whose meaning is uncertain. It’s important to know exactly what the words mean. I once wrote a poem about traveling through Wisconsin farmland. I was raised in the city so I don’t know a combine from a thresher. But in my poem, I needed to mention this piece of industrial sized farming equipment. I thought it was a plow. I looked it up on the internet and found the picture – it was a combine.

One of the women in the group did grow up on a farm. She questioned me as to whether or not I was using the right word. Now, if I had just picked the word I thought was right, but didn’t know for sure, I would go back and look it up. I might now think it matters, but there are people out there to whom it matters very much. If you write about something you know nothing about, you lose all credibility if you get it wrong. And though poems can be mysterious or even fantastical, they still have to ring true. If I had just said “tractor” the poem might not have made sense to people who know about farming.

Besides misspelling and misusage, I consider punctuation. Will I punctuate the poem like one normally does prose – a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, commas in their proper place, periods or question marks, or even quotation marks where needed? Or do I want no punctuation, no capital letters? Or a combination of the two?

If I deviate from standard punctuation, I need to know why. Maybe I want to convey a certain mood and I think punctuation interferes with that, or I want the poem to flow a particular way. If I use punctuation sparsely, I need to know why I put a period in one spot, but not another. The form I use in my poems helps to convey meaning.

Another big thing I look for in revision – “ing” words. Any word that ends in “ing” is suspect. So are variations of the verb “to be.”  They slow the rhythm down. The poem lacks immediacy and movement. Examples:  “I was walking” versus “I walked” or “It was hot” versus “The heat seeped into my skin.”

Beyond that, maybe the rhythm jars in a certain spot. And of course, there’s always the clichés:  Red as a tomato, bright as the sun, cold as ice, pretty as a flower – anything that smacks of cliché gets crossed out or re-worked.

Of course, sometimes an “ing” word is the only word that works, or has to be there for some reason. Even a cliché might have its place. The key is to know why you need it there and be certain you can’t say it another, better way.

The revision process is where the poem really gets written. It’s a process of discovery. I get to chip away at the rough draft, dab something here, scrape off something there, and the poem takes shape. Then I get to share it with other poets. These poets are people I trust. They know what poetry is all about and they respect the work – their own and everybody else’s. 

After I receive their comments and suggestions, I go back to the poem and work on it some more. It might need a lot of work – in which case I will bring it back to the group again. Otherwise, I add the finishing touches and voilà – it is finished. Then I get to share it with the world.