Editing by Stages

I recently received a great rejection letter for a couple of poems I’d sent to the British journal Magma Poetry. The editor said she’d received thousands and thousands of submissions for this special theme issue and, if it was any consolation, I was ‘among the two hundred or so people [she] really wanted to publish, but [she] only had space for fifty five poems’. Yes, thank you, that did make me feel better. Not great, but better.

I also received notice I’m getting paid for the poem accepted for the Parliamentary Poet Laureate’s Poem of the Month website (I’ll be up December 2010). Well, that was only if I wanted the money. They did say I could turn it down. Yes, that’s right. Our government thinks poets are so well off, we can say, ‘No, it’s okay, you need the money more than me. Go spend it on a fighter jet.’ Sure. Admittedly, it is the equivalent of selling 50 books of poetry. But sadly, that’s not much.

Today, I thought it might be entertaining for you to see a few of the stages a poem goes through as it edges toward a finished version (not that a poem stays finished around me). Here’s a sample that’s still on its way.

1st:
You can’t draw your knife edge against
the future, argue with a window
that hasn’t shut. Carve fault lines
through a saint, turn a swastika
into a star with a few quick
marks you can smell in the air.
You can paint your walls
the colour of your canoe or a suburb
the desert’s dawn shades. If you collide
with a galaxy, a leaf, a feud, waves
will happen, washing rocks
at your feet.

3rd:
You can’t draw your knife edge against
the future, argue with a window
that hasn’t shut, carve fault lines
through a saint, or stop a swastika
with a few quick marks you can smell
in the air. You can paint your walls
the colour of your canoe or a suburb
the desert’s dawn shades. If you collide
with a galaxy, a leaf, a feud, the sea
will break over your feet, washing
the rocks you sit on.

4th:
Round

You can’t draw your knife edge against
the future, argue with a window
that hasn’t shut, carve fault lines
through a saint’s faint heart or stop
a swastika with a magic marker.
You can paint your walls the colour
of your canoe, trace the outline of Catharina’s
tired rim on your skin, but you know if you collide
with a galaxy, a leaf, a feud, the sea will break
over your knees, swirling its clouds of dust.
If you can’t say hi to a stranger, trust the atoms
in your desk to hold still, then lean
a pillow’s stuffing a bird’s soft back
and turn a swastika to a star with your pen.

Editing this poem through its various stages (and there were many more than I’m showing here) required me to continually decide which images worked and which didn’t. It meant some tough choices as I have a bad habit of growing fond of the sound of my words. But a poem’s integrity is more important to me, so I let go of the canoe (just didn’t fit) and suburbs the colour of the desert (despite knowing it can be true: see Calgary). Other images were collapsed (it was urgent I get rid of that desperately bad ‘say hi to a stranger’; later drafts aren’t always better) or changed (I wanted to keep the walls and the colour). I play with images in draft after draft until they finally speak true. That’s my job.

Latest Version:

Round

You can’t draw your knife edge against
the future, argue with a window
that hasn’t shut, carve fault lines
through a saint’s faint heart or stop
walls with a can of paint. Tracing the outline
of Catharina’s tired rim on the moon, you know
colliding with a galaxy, a leaf, a feud, will break
the sea over your knees, swirl clouds of dust
into a stranger’s face, hold the atoms
in your desk still as you lean a pillow’s
stuffing on a bird’s soft back and turn
a swastika into a star with your pen.

I’ll be sending this poem off to Don Domanski after some more work. Watch this space.

P. S. Check out Eco-Libris for reviews by bloggers of ‘green books’ printed on recycled paper, an earth-friendly choice. I didn’t participate this year but hope to do so in 2011.

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