All right, I’ll admit it. I’m obsessive about editing my own work. This can be a good thing. I find the more I edit (and read), the better I get. I wince when I remember how I used to gaze fondly at my poems, rhapsodizing their every perfection.

But sometimes I wonder if I might have swung too far the other way. Do I now over-edit to compensate for my separation anxiety? Is my novel suffering from the botox effect because I don’t want to let go?

It’s definitely a problem with my news poems. Karl Barth, a long-dead theologian, recommended praying with one hand on the bible, one on the newspaper. There are times I write poems in a similar way, typing with my eyes on the Globe and Mail.

And then, of course, I edit. And edit. And yeah. For another 3 or 4 months until the story is so off the radar, no one’s interested. I figure one day I can publish a book of poetry called Stale Dated. Should be a best seller.

Today’s poem is a perfect example. It was written for the sinking, off the coast of Brazil, of a tall ship carrying students back in February of this year. The images were irresistible but my first draft was not so good. Take a look:

First Version
Sinking Past You
For the sinking of the Concordia, Feb. 17, 2010

How a boat moves in the wind
white sails rearing, a stallion against
an unseen roaring that pushes
it over into the waves, oil slicking
canvas, flooding decks
with panic. But rehearsals
work, guide you in the fierce
dark to the airbags flying out
from the sides till you huddle
anchovies in a capsizing
can, skyscrapers of water lifting
and dropping you as if
you don’t matter. Which you don’t
to the salt of the wind grinding into
your faces. But like the Santiago’s crew
you live while the ship goes down
bereft on the ocean floor, another home
for those who dwell in darkness
and the deep silence of the sea.

Now this one should probably go down in the record books. Ooh, a stallion and anchovies in one poem. And airbags flying out from the sides. Sometimes I write so fast, my brain cells don’t have a chance to converse. I need time afterwards to check for mixed metaphors.

Here’s what sober second (and third and fourth … ) thought produced:

Sinking Past You
For the Concordia, Feb. 17, 2010

How a boat moves in the wind,
a downdraft rearing white sails against
an unseen roaring pushing
waves pushing sides slicking
canvas until tipping starts. Rehearsals
guide you through fierce
clouds till you huddle, ice cubes
in a capsizing tray, water walls lifting
and dropping as if
you don’t matter. Which you don’t
to the salt of the wind grinding
your faces, licking your lips
to puckers. Santiago-style, you live
while the ship turns to bone, another home
for those who dwell
in the deep silence of the sea.

I can’t hope for another ship to sink so I can have this poem ready to send out (can I?) but meanwhile, if there is another serial killer in Canada, I have one ready for his wife.

I love medical research. I find the body endlessly fascinating even when I don’t understand all the terminology. It’s like learning a foreign language. Equally fascinating for me is what isn’t known: the body is a complex system far beyond any computer models they’ve come up with.

It’s also mysterious.

I know people whose bodies just work. They glide through their days. Okay, so they’re young. But I know others, including young ones, whose brains are wired wrong or whose lungs grow spots. And then there’s mine, which suffers fierce electrical storms. Among other things.

So the body can be a hard place. That’s the subject of today’s poem.

First draft:

Grey Fog

The more I learn the more
I am amazed the body works
at all. Add spare parts
to a car and it will
go wrong, the fridges
of grandma showing what
complexity adds to a repair
bill. They pale beside
our genes, spliced from
mom and dad, zygote
and sperm containing seeds
so small, an oak couldn’t find
its way. And yet we do,
multiplication breeding kidneys,
fingers, brain, a heart that must
stand a lifetime. Seems
absurd, that in that pink
pulsing mix is stamp-collecting,
the deep desire for a violinist’s
bow, the need to know
how an engine ticks, and why
we are here, but it is. DNA splices
new combo packages, sans choice,
sheer luck of the bloody draw whether
schizo will be spat in your hat
or honours laid with crystal.
If the photocopier jams as you
form, expect mutations, a stutter
stretching across pages, or worse,
an irregular blotch where you needed
to breathe, where your mind wanted
to think, where a valve would have formed
unblemished. It’s a miracle so many
of us live, some clearly marked
damaged on our labels, some
with tears in our hidden
seams.  We’re not alone. There is
no perfect flower, no bush
without a mark. Nature
is not perfect.

When I sat down to edit this, I was bewildered by the title. I guess I was obeying my poem-a-day rule of writing down the first thing that came into my head. Yeah, I have no idea where ‘grey fog’ came from either.

It didn’t take me long to choose ‘Speckled Leaves,’ since I wanted a title that foreshadowed the ending. Then I had to do some basic research since my memory is not my best part (though I do have lovely ankles). Zygote? Nope, that’s not what the mama egg is called. But once I found out the zygote is the combination of ovum and sperm, I liked it better, so in it stayed.

My big problem with editing this poem was choosing examples. Which issues slid in most cleanly? Which talents worked? Stamp collecting showed up in the first draft but is so rare these days, I decided to replace it. And much as I love philosophy, I couldn’t find a way to make it work—not philosophy’s failing, it just means I didn’t work hard enough.

Instead, I went for a more contemporary example (time to stop stale-dating myself) and added in what is to me, an astonishing predisposition towards activism that some have (thank heavens).

Then I tightened the poem, each draft allowing me to see waffling phrases more clearly. And of course, I read the poem out loud to myself, so I could hear how the words sounded together. I know it can seem boring to go back over and over your work this way but I’ve found it’s the only route to singing. And I want my work to sing.

Current final version:

Speckled Leaves

The more I learn the more
I am amazed the body works.
Add spare parts to a car
and it goes wrong, grandma’s fridge
showing what complexity adds
to a repair bill. Both pale
beside our genes, that combo
spliced from mom and dad, zygote
containing seeds so small, an oak
couldn’t find its way. And yet we do,
multiplication breeding kidneys,
fingers, brain, a heart that must
last a lifetime. Absurd
that in that pink pulsing mix lies
web design, a violinist’s bow, the need
to right what isn’t known, or how to rev
an engine’s guts. DNA is sheer luck
of the bloody draw, no choice
whether schizo will be spat or honours
laid with crystal. Jam the photocopier
and leave a stutter stretching
across pages, a blotch where you need
to breathe, where a valve would form
unblemished. It’s a miracle
so many of us live, some marked
damaged on our labels, some with tears
in hidden seams. Small consolation:
there is no perfect flower,
no bush without a mark.

I was thinking of so many when I wrote this and I dedicate the poem to them, especially I and N.

I’ve written dozens of poems to my migraines in the past but none have worked out. All are in my crap file. This is the first one where I think I’ve begun to move from simple wails – ‘it hurts, it hurts’ – to better imagery for why and how. But, needless to say, the poem needed editing.

First Version:

Bad Day

Carla stayed the night, so did
thunderstorms hovering over
nearby towns. I feel their weight
pressing skull-down though
they haven’t come near enough
to watch lightening slice
my face open. Your voice
is thunder enough and your hands
slide the spikes of rain down
my back. I am skin-sensitive,
nerves the tiny fuses
lightening sparks from, a system
strung on power cords
I don’t have.

Only a minor title change this time, and as usual, just so I can provide that bit of context my readers need. After all, how many people know that migraineurs are often weather-sensitive? It’s always good when editing your own work to question your assumptions, the knowledge you take for granted. Having someone else read your work helps here – if they say WTF, it’s important to listen. I remember arguing with one of my early readers (sorry Deepa), only to realize in the end she was right. If she couldn’t figure out what the poem was about, I had a problem. So that’s why I harp on this issue.

From there on in, it was the usual editing, which almost always means pruning, rearranging, and finding the best expressive images.

The latter is something I practise while walking or driving. I’ll make up non-traditional, non-clichéd descriptions for people, trees, a parking meter (grey nun waits, curbside, for my offering), etc. Since I want to transform how readers look at these things, I have to make the images compelling. So in this poem, I use thunderstorms as both metaphor for pain as well as origin, but I use it in an intimate way, saying it stayed the night, like our friend did.

I’m not saying I’m always successful at this (there is a comments section below), but it’s something I work at.

Current Version:

Bad Head

Carla stayed the night, so did
thunderstorms hovering over
nearby towns. It’s too far
to see the jagged edges slice
my face open but their weight
presses skull-down. Voices
are thunder enough, all touch
the spike of rain pounding
pavement. I am skin-sensitive,
nerves the tiny fuses lightning
sparks from, a system strung
on power cords I don’t control.

This poem has been re-revised. See Another Ending Rewritten.

My nephew from Tanzania is starting to write poetry. He’s a nephew by affection, so there’s no biological connection to explain this. It’s simply a case of another teenager (this one tall, athletic, and 16 years old) falling in love with the power of words. Once again, I’m reassured that poetry is not a dying art.

When the family visited Canada this July, we saw as much of them as we could, including having them over for dinner at which we served barbequed sausages, much to David’s twin sister’s dismay. Anne had watched a documentary, Food, Inc., about where our meat comes from and she described it beautifully. I’m not sure we’ll be eating sausages again for a while.

Just before they left that evening, David set a challenge: to write poems to the sausages’ origin. He wrote his later that night, playing with the theme in an excellent metaphorical way. I took longer and was inspired by Anne’s concerns.

I had to be careful though. My first 17 drafts were intensely moralizing. And that wasn’t good.

Take a look at the first version:

Sausage

Sausage once played in mud, little feet
wallowing in cool earth on way
to pull teat. Jostled with round
friends, no pink, just the coarse skin
of bristles mottled the colours genes
gave. Sun shone, went in. Pig grew
through winter’s barn, out to spring’s
trough where slop lay. And grew.
Heard rough grumble on track,
the squeal of metal then stop.
Lined up grunting, climbing, moving,
stinking, into walls, floors, white chill
leaking fear as stun ends pig and
stripping begins, reducing to useable
parts then grinding, the making
of sausage, happy sausage. Others
grow in cubicle, barn blind, no sun
to play. Meat mixed with other
misery we eat, stuffed in tight
foreign skin.

Note how I started by giving the reader no context for the poem, so my opening image is simply bizarre. Then I give the mass-market pigs short shrift and seem to imply they don’t go through the abattoir. And since I don’t give any information to explain the final phrase, ‘tight foreign skin’, the ending doesn’t work either. It’s irrelevant that I’m correct – Anne can grey your hair describing how supermarket sausages are made from pork from various countries combined in yet another country. If my readers don’t know what I’m talking about, then the poem fails.

So I added a new beginning, one that has my narrator opening a package of organic sausages, though I worked not to name that but only to show it in subsequent lines. I broke the poem into two stanzas so the warehoused pigs get their own prominence, even if only briefly. That hierarchy of attention is deliberate – it’s the only moralizing I allowed myself. Apart, that is, from the actual description of the pigs’ living conditions. But even there, I forced myself to be terse in the second part, not to linger, not to cast explicit value judgements. Remember, all this took me draft after draft. I’m not a quick learner.

Finally, I needed an ending. One that was honest – after all, I do eat sausages and feed them to guests (sorry Anne!). I decided to bring this poem back to the kitchen where it began. I wanted to state the facts and then serve them up. See what you think:

Sausage

Looking back from brown paper, the coil
of links linked, we remember pig
once played in mud, little feet wallowing
in cool earth on way to teat pull. Jostled
with round friends, coarse skin of bristles
mottled the colours genes threw. Sun shone,
went in. Pig grew through winter’s barn, out
to spring’s trough where lunch lay, a feast
of barley and corn rain produced.

Others, now buried beneath the pressure
of shrink-wrap on foam tray, grew barn blind,
cubicle tight, bulked by slop sick cells would
thrive on. They too heard the rough grumble
on track, the squeal of metal stop. Lined up grunting,
stinking, into the place where white chill
leaks blood, where stun then stripping starts.
Useable parts packaged, the grind becomes
the sausage, bits and pieces crushed then stuffed
into casings we eat. After all, it’s dinner time.

What would be nice in a future version? I’ve just realized I’ve left out the smell of the sausages grilling, the taste of them in a toasted bun heaped high with onions and mustard. I feel another draft coming on …

P.S. Ian MacLachlan, my ‘boss’ at The Canadian Geographer, wrote a book on the beef industry with the great title, Kill and Chill. I’ve offered him Cluck and Pluck should he ever do chickens.

I’ve been thinking a lot about poetry’s health lately. Too often I feel it’s the wallflower in book review sections, never mind in people’s lives. Who really cares about the art we’re so passionate about? We know it can change lives, but does anyone else?

I feel better after reading this wonderful piece by Charles Simic, the former US poet laureate. He’s right – there’s poetry happening everywhere: on the web, in universities, and even in bars. In my home town, Ottawa, Canada, we have the Tree Reading Series, one of Canada’s oldest, plus a host of others, all surprisingly well-attended. See ByWords’ Calendar of Literary Events.

What gives me real heart is an In/Words reading I attended recently. In/Words (on Facebook) is traditionally aimed at the university crowd, and even though it was a rainy summer night the place was full of young people. Despite all predictions of the death of poetry, poetry is still hot.

But it’s growing and changing too. There’s wonderful visual poetry: see derek beaulieu and Amanda Earl’s new work (which I love).

And there’s also a new stream marrying word and image interactively online. Take a look at J. R. Carpenter’s webpage, Lucky Soap, especially Entre Ville (click on the windows). She’s one of my heroes. After seeing her present her work last March at Carleton University, I went home and wrote the following:

Illuminated

for J. R. Carpenter

The ancient monks did it, dipping
quills into colours that still glow
around the edges of their words
angels hovering above
townspeople in their markets
a baby here, a donkey carrying
bread on the next golden
page. Even the first letter
of a poem could be a serpent
unto itself, coiled with the gleam
of mis-spent life, a warning
to readers of what lies
ahead. Ah, but these pictures
were for the ignorant
a friend says, images to carry
where words can’t. No
matter. The two together
are lovelier
than this page.

As you can see by looking ahead to the final version below, this poem didn’t require a huge edit. It’s one of those rare ‘gift’ poems, where many images came out fully formed. Other images, however, did require more visualization. I didn’t want the angels to just hover over the townspeople but there wasn’t space in this poem for too much detail. So, after several attempts, I settled on a single, tight phrase, one that allows readers to supply their own wings. A couple of drafts laid cucumbers and cabbages on the market stalls but they were obtrusive and got cut in favour of the simplicity of the patron who was always pictured being generous.

These changes were made on posting day; an older version of this poem can be seen on the Tree Reading Series website, as I gave it as a sample of my work for my reading as part of the Hot Ottawa Voices. But in my poems, change is a constant. I love editing poetry.

One last note: I deliberately left the word ‘No’ as a line ending. I wanted to refute the reason my friend gave for illuminated manuscripts, even though I know she’s technically correct (I still like to think the monks were having fun). By leaving ‘No’ hanging there, readers hear it before they continue on to my real use. I learned this trick from an online critique (sadly before I knew to save links). There is so much to learn from reading what others see in great poetry – check out Arc Poetry Magazine’s How Poems Work.

Here’s the (current) final version.

Illuminated

for J. R. Carpenter

The ancient monks did it, dipping
quills into colours that still
glow around the edges
of their words, angels hovering
wing-spread above townspeople
in their markets, a king’s
purpled horse prancing
by a wailing child, coin flashing
while a donkey carries
bread on the next golden
page. Even the first letter
of a poem could be a serpent
unto itself, coiled with the gleam
of mis-spent life, a warning
to readers of what lies
ahead. Ah, but those pictures
were for the ignorant,
a friend says, images to carry
what words couldn’t. No
matter. The two together
are lovelier than this page.

Bodies are like cars: some are lemons. Mine’s not a lemon on a grand scale, like a Toyota with the accelerator stuck to the floor. More a worn-out Chevy with a polished exterior which fools those who don’t look under the hood.

Periodically I write poems to my body, like throwing a biscuit to a snarly dog. Earlier attempts were dismal flops. After all, pain is not a popular party guest.

But I’ve kept trying, figuring the more I learn about language, the better my skills for conveying that four letter word. Talk about a poetry walk – this one’s internal.

At last, I think I’m getting there, though the first draft wasn’t promising:

Sleepless

It’s not a matter of sleeping
on clouds, no lift of air
holds without
a touch. It’s not the warm
slosh of water giving way
beneath a hip’s pressing
weight. It’s not the sharpness
of spring coiled beneath
the chemical of foam
layers. It’s latex, natural
outpouring from an injured
tree that lies spread
beneath my aching joints.

It doesn’t help. I try again,
learn to lie straight-legged
in bed, to leave womb’s curl
behind, try to ease the cramp my mind
knows by heart. But this highway
has traffic that does not stop,
nerves flash code even
scientists can’t decode.
I roll again.

Sleepless has been through so many revisions, it’s kept me up at night. But it needed it. Since I wrote it at 2 am, I wasn’t paying the kind of attention to detail I’ve been working on. For example, I never stopped to ask whether the title conveyed the meaning of the poem. Or what the opening ‘It’s’ referred to, the one repeated in the next three sentences. In both cases, I was committing one of my usual sins: assuming too much. I may know what the poem’s about, but if my readers don’t, the poem fails.

Having fixed those issues, I next had to deal with mixed metaphors. Slipping traffic in at 2 am is excusable. Allowing it to stay is not. Yes, doctors now speak of pain highways in the body. Someday, I’ll work on a poem with space for naming that road. But this one had too many images already. So cut. On to the next draft and the search for images I could slide in, ones that didn’t make my research too obtrusive. The last thing I want is to give the impression of a lecture hall.

So this meant the word ‘mitochondria’ couldn’t be used. But the metaphor ‘tiny power plants’ could. And thanks to my overriding nature theme, it was easy to incorporate the fact that trees have mitochondria too. (I think that is so cool.)

Finally, I needed an ending. Oh endings. I’ve not been brilliant at them in the past. For example, I forgot to write one for the first sermon I gave, so I simply stopped and said, ‘Bye bye.’ Yes. I really did that. In front of a whole church-full of people. Stellar.

I’m getting better at them now, thanks to a wonderful essay by Ottawa poet Barbara Myers in Arc Poetry Magazine’s Winter 2010 issue (see an excerpt here). Now I sit and gaze into space while I ask myself that crucial question: ‘what am I trying to say?’ Once I’ve figured the answer out, not only does the ending usually come, but the whole poem often gets tighter. Someday, I will learn to ask this question earlier in the process. I hope.

Here’s the current draft of this poem – it will be revisited:

Living With Fibro
Myalgia Aches

I’d like to sleep on clouds, the lift of air
holding without a touch. Or on
the warm slosh of water contained
in rubber, to heat my hip’s
pressing bone. At least I gave up
the sharpness of spring coiled
beneath the chemical of foam layers.
Bought latex, nature’s gift
from an injured tree, to conform
to my tender joints, shape-shifter
learning my body’s subtle arch,
passing weight around.

It doesn’t help. I try new tricks, learn
to lie straight legged, leave womb’s curl
behind to ease the cramps my mind
knows by heart. But nerves flash distress
with messages scientists can’t decode.
They point to cells’ hidden contents,
the tiny power plants we share
with trees, the ones that sometimes
go wrong. I turn again, cast my mind
further, away from body’s reach to where
sleep waits, a fog longing to roll in.
Tomorrow will be rough.

I’ve spent the last week going to concerts at Music and Beyond, the new chamber music festival in town. Never mind the stinking heat, I’ve been out there lining up around the block with the other fanatics, and then inside, squirming on bare pews.

To my surprise, it’s been a useful exercise for my poetry. Especially two of the concerts. The first, The Gallery Project, featured new Canadian music composed to art mostly painted by dead white guys. The second was for piano and featured music written by … dead white guys. Okay, so I’ve also been thinking about the need for diversity in the classical music scene, but that’s not my main point today (though it is bugging me. The performers were mostly live white guys. White is getting boring. Read here for a local success story. And then, if you want to be proactive, email here.)

I’d previously read a post by the Newfoundland poet Stephen Rowe in which he discusses what makes poetry great. I don’t want to repeat it here – it’s worth reading. But it had started me reflecting on how I recognize excellence in other’s work when I read or hear it.

I carried that question into concerts, where it’s easier for me to hear greatness because of my early training (my undergraduate degree is in performance on the french horn – one of those popular party instruments, the kind people were always begging me to pull out and play).

I know the techniques to listen for in music. So when I heard Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata the other night, there was no question it was superb. And I could say that even though I didn’t like Tigran Alikhanov’s interpretation of it. The music shone! Next on the program was Schumann’s Carnaval. Not so good. Yes, Alikhanov banged his way through it, but still, as my husband said afterwards, ‘needs editing’. (I think he might hang out with me too much.) The Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition after intermission was straight back to genius.

The contemporary composers were also mixed. Two of them, Scott Macmillan and Jocelyn Morlock, had written tight, crisp pieces. They never sagged. But another one’s work was movie music. Cut. And someone else’s piece had some lovely sections interspersed with ‘oh dear’. I felt I needed scissors in order to be able to enjoy it.

All this made me think of my own poems. I want them to become like Beethoven’s or Morlock’s work. Or, as Rowe points out, like Calvin & Hobbes. Also great. I don’t want the saggy bits where my readers’ attention droops (have I lost you yet?). This means continually honing my ear by reading others’ poetry and by paying attention to what works – and doesn’t.

I also want to know when what I have written is fine but slight, like another of the new Canadian compositions. Hearing it helped me to realize that while the poem I wrote waiting in line for that concert is quite nice, it’s lightweight. Yes, I worked on it a lot (I was in line for an hour) so I got it to a reasonable first stage. But it will never be more than a learner poem, where I manipulate language and play with edge and shadow. It’s still important practise. When the good stuff comes, it helps me to be more ready for it. But from now on, my learner poems stay buried.

Fortunately, the Voice granted me a second poem that day, since the first one left me hungry. I’m happier with this one, though I have to confess, I wrote it during the concert and made a prune-lipped old lady mad. She thought I was texting. It’s quite hard to explain poetry sotto voce.

So for today’s editing example, here’s poem #1:

The Glint of Water

.

.

.

Yup, it’s gone. There are times to be brutal in editing and this is one of them.

Here is the replacement offering:

Listening to Music

Listening to you play,
chords crashing on a flood-lit
stage, clarinet colluding
with string’s waver, I remember
my horn’s own soar, lips tight
against cold metal, breath’s
quiver driving a line on.
Do I miss it? My mind
travels back to rooms tiny
with years’ hot sweat, watch
propped on stand keeping time
with scales running through
boredom’s stubborn face. Yes,
there was joy in playing together,
my part united in Brahms’
grand whole, but always the need
for piecework dragged me
down. Back my mind goes,
back, to cycling home for
lunch-time rounds, trucks breathing
hot on my thin neck. It wasn’t
worth it, was only a mother’s
lost dream. I listen now
with words. Content.

One of poetry’s gifts is that it can hold up a mirror for us, one that allows us to freshly see ourselves and our lives, to feel how others have lived our experiences.

That’s what the best poets do. I’m still working at it, but happily learning from a master, Barry Dempster, one of my favourite poets. He doesn’t do private tuition, but that hasn’t stopped me from conducting a private Barry Dempster tutorial program. Reading his work – and listening to him whenever I can – has taught me much about how to use imagery to transform the ordinary. For an example of how he does it, take a look at The Conversation.

At a recent reading, Barry told us he takes his students on ‘poetry walks’ where he gets them to examine every bush and leaf, every crack and berry up close, so that detail can inform their work. Good idea, I thought. But living as I do with migraines and fibromyalgia, I don’t always make it outside. Fortunately, I have years of remembered observation to draw on.

So when it comes time to write my poem a day, I simply go somewhere. I relive an experience, working to recapture its essential details.

Here’s an example, first draft:

The higher we go, the more we hear

We sleep high, your guest bed floating
among Toronto’s clouds, the down-slide
of windows the blankest of mirrors reflecting
the preening weather, bluest sky to grey’s layered
weight. Up here, I’d thought height contained
only multitudes of bird song on wind, gravity holding
a city’s discord to the ground. I was wrong.
Each intersection squawks us awake, the horns of hurry
blaring as engines rev in lighted anticipation.
The weighty whine of air-brakes lift us from
our warm blanketed cocoons and into the bright glare
of the truck’s cab, radio crooning the long-haul,
a dog’s nuzzle cold on the hand gripping gears.
But we travel just a few miles down the Gardiner,
Lake Ontario sparkling our eyes awake, before
your furnace comes on, a low humming of warmth
covering our ears. We roll into it, skin-to-skin
with work’s release, and sleep until coffee enters.

Remember, the single rule of my writing a poem a day is to write the first words that come into my head. They’re usually the title. There is no rule that says I have to keep those words, so they’re quite often edited out. The rule is simply there so I don’t get in my own way, dithering over the blank page. I find my subconscious almost always has a plan for the poem. My job is to listen. And then to fix the results.

The first thing I did in this poem was to change the perspective from ‘We’ to ‘I’. It’s pretty hard to convince a reader that both members of a couple are imagining being in a truck’s cab at the same time. It’s much stronger to use a single, clear voice.

Then I had to get rid of repetition: ‘high’ in the title and the first line meant one had to go. So I changed the title. And I had ‘awake’ twice. And ‘until’. Bad. But then I chose to deliberately repeat ‘I’d thought’ to emphasize my narrator’s preconceptions. And I still begin and end with ‘sleep’. While revising the poem over the last few weeks, I’ve carefully considered each word and its role.

That led me to pare images at the beginning and the end, where I don’t want the distraction. I shortened line lengths. And finally, I took out the coffee. I don’t like coffee. Even the scent of it in a poem disturbs me.

Here’s the current final version:

Heard Visiting You

I sleep high, your guest bed floating
among Toronto’s clouds, up a slide
of windows, blank mirrors reflecting
weather’s changing face. I’d thought
height contained nothing more
than wings, the streaks of bird
and plane singing songs
only sky can hear. I’d thought
gravity held a city’s discord
to the ground. I was wrong.
Each intersection squawks me
awake, the horns of hurry blaring
as engines rev in lighted anticipation.
I’m lifted from warm blankets
by the weighty whine of air-brakes
into the bright glare of a truck’s cab,
radio crooning the long-haul,
a dog’s nuzzle cold on the hand
gripping gears. I travel a few miles
down the Gardiner, Lake Ontario sparkling
at my eyes until your furnace
comes on, a low humming of warmth
covering my ears. I pull it closer
as sleep slides me away

This poem was published on the Parliament of Canada’s Poem of the Month website, December 2010.

Let’s face it, many of us mine our lives for our poetry. It’s what we know best and it’s easy to write about, especially when we’re first starting out. The pits are familiar, the contours known to us by heart. It’s a great place to learn to play with language.

The trick is to find the universal in the personal. I’m not saying I was a fast learner. My Crap Poem file is vastly thicker than my good one, but I did get some keepers out of my early years.

Here’s one of them. Its genesis was getting to know a person who seemed lovely and then … wow. I originally named the poem after her which was a bad idea. It was also a bad idea because, as you can see from the first draft below, the original poem was too obscure.

Person’s Name Was Here

We all come with suitcases trundling
behind us, some stuffed so full, cords
hold them tight, you can see the threads
fraying, how taut they pull. Others
like scared old ladies, carry theirs around
their necks, stray feathers slipping, leaving
a path so they can retrace their steps. Or is it
that for some, their way is so impeded, they knick
every building they pass, a little chink here, a
welt there, it’s not much in the abstract, more art
than hansel and gretel, till it’s you the edge catches.

So the first thing I did was change the title. I chose one to help provide context for the poem’s meaning. And of course, I read the poem aloud, something I always do since it allows me to hear the flow of the language, or in the case above, the cumbersomeness. I questioned what was essential for my meaning in all that description, an exercise I always submit my poems to. You can see below which phrases made the cut. You can also see that I decided to rearrange the opening, starting small (purse-size issues), then moving increasingly larger.

I also changed the perspective in this last version. In the original, I’d made the claim that everyone has baggage, big baggage at that. How to win friends among your readers! It’s not even what I intended. I wanted the poem to be about those who carry serious baggage. We all know a few. We may even recognize ourselves. But it’s better for readers to do that than for me to hit them over the head.

This is where careful questioning of the role of every word in a poem helps. I also do it for sound, but I’ll look at that in a future posting.

So here’s the current final version:

Baggage

Many carry theirs like scared old ladies’ purses,
tight around their necks, holding close.
Others come with suitcases trundling behind,
some barely held shut by fraying cords,
stray issues slipping out to form
a wispy path in the night, the kind
girls with hollow eyes follow. Is yours so big
your way is impeded and you can’t help
but nick every building you pass, a little chink here,
a welt there? It’s not much in the abstract, more art
than Hansel and Gretel, till it’s us your edge catches.

I’m not sure what happened in my late forties, but all of a sudden young people started offering me their seats on the bus. And cashiers gave me seniors’ discounts. Now, in and of themselves, these are wonderful things. But context is everything and I was a bit disconcerted. What was going on?

That question became the subject of today’s poem. Here’s the first version:

What Remains on a Face?

Seats appear at 50 from youth
who don’t surrender easily. What lines
do they read on a face alone
with itself, a face that thinks
it’s shuttered. Night must
seep out, the kind that curls
around ankles and pulls
you down. How to hide then?
How to carry the tinkle of bells
in a green field, the whiteness
of daisies in grass? She doesn’t
know, rearranges her lips blindly.

My first edit was simply about pruning. I liked this poem right off (and when I wrote it, I wasn’t liking much I was writing), but I could see the need for tightening. And a new title. I decided to have a play on words, one that gives an (impossible) observer’s stance. I want the poem to give a sense of the narrator trying to observe herself from the outside, to figure out what others see.

Seen on a Bus

Seats appear at fifty from youth
who don’t surrender. What lines
are read on a face alone with itself,
a face that thinks: shuttered. Night
must slip out, the kind that curls
round ankles and pulls. How to hide
then? How to convey the tinkle of bells
in a field, the whiteness of daisies
against grass? She doesn’t know,
rearranges her lips blindly.

Okay. That was much better. And I was feeling happy. I loved the images of the tinkling of bells in a field, the whiteness of daisies against grass. Every time I read them, they made me happy.

Then I realized I was having a Sound of Music moment. I was channelling my inner Maria. My narrator was 50, for pete’s sake, not an 80 year old Swiss immigrant remembering being a milkmaid in the Alps.

So I cut those images. Yup. They were inappropriate in this poem. My narrator wanted to convey normality, she wanted to look professional.

Here’s the final version. I still like it. Which isn’t to say it won’t get edited again.

Seen on a Bus

Seats appear at fifty from youth
who don’t surrender. What lines
are read on a face alone with itself,
a face that thinks: shuttered. Night
must slip out, the kind that curls
round ankles and pulls. How to hide
then? How to convey the tidiness
of a desk, the neatness of files
against wood? She doesn’t know,
rearranges her lips blindly.