Welcome to my webpage where I’m going to edit a poem online each week. Writing is only one-third the pleasure of poetry, another third is reading others’ work, and the final third is editing. And I love to edit.

The first version of today’s poem is bad. I wrote it by flashlight in the middle of the night. I was trying to sleep but I didn’t ignore that voice in my head, tell it to piss off. You do that and it stops speaking to you. Mind you, in this case, I think it was a little sleepy too. But that’s okay.

Good poetry always requires work. Think of a plumber showing up at your house and saying, ‘well, I haven’t actually practised this but I know I’ll get it right first time.’ He won’t. That’s why I edit. The more I practise, the more I learn. That way, I can make more complicated mistakes next time …

First Draft:

In My Bathroom at Night

In my bathroom at night, the sky
is a planetarium dome
within reach, there
outside the windows, city
sky, clouds laid out
for show, the tips of houses
trees ringing the bottom
just like they always
did. My seat, the usual
bedtime throne, made
glorious by indigo and silk
screened greys. You were
right to talk me into
buying this house.

Let’s get down to work. First off, the title sucks. I want to make my readers look up. So I’ve chosen one that evokes Ibsen’s, ‘The sun. The sun’, from the end of his play, Ghosts. I want this image even though it’s a quote from a character, Osvald, who is going mad from syphilis. The allusion for me is of a deep need. How many people will get this reference? Irrelevant. I know it’s there and it adds a rich layer of meaning to the poem. Think of poetry as cryptic crosswords. People love them. All we need is to get poetry into the newspaper every day.

From there on, I deleted filler words, tightened others, changed the ending, and again. Overall, I aimed for phrases that would cause a reader to pause and see the image in a new light.

Final Version:

The Sky. The Sky.

In the bathroom at night
a planetarium lays the city
low, stabs stars high
above the ring of homes
and trees. My seat is the usual
bedtime throne made
glorious by indigo and silk
screened greys smoking
among buildings on the far
horizon, dabs of window light
shining through. All I need
is this wealth spread
out before me, my nightly
celestial feast. There is
no hunger here.