In my twenties, my biggest struggle with writing was translating my brain to the page. I knew in great detail what feeling or atmosphere I wanted to paint or evoke, but my poems generally came out either full of impenetrably abstract and densely stacked metaphors, or sentimental platitudes. Either way, my grand, complex inner visions were not translating, and it was frustrating. 

Later, I began to notice the problem of public vs private associations — those odd meanings and attachments which a word or phrase (or story) might have for each of us, which no one else shares. Using a little blank book, I started collecting my associations into a kind of dictionary. Here’s an example of an entry:

STOVE

gas, warm, death, rumors of death, baby bottles, orange and green, forgetting your affairs, boiling, taking the time, spread evenly, age 13 and the windows rattled, I got up out of bed but there was no movement but my own, could I trust the dark, had there really been a movement, was it really something happening and had it happened so quickly, a taste of movement, but death for him, death by the fire blanket, thick and warm and baby bottled

Stoves made me think of a time in my youth when a local man’s house exploded from a gas leak. They also made me remember sitting on the cozy sofa amidst late 70s decor, waiting for my bottle’s milk to be heated up on the stovetop. I associated the word “stove” with both catastrophe and sweet comfort, so it carried those meanings with it into my poetry – for me, that is. Without any context or help, the subtle powers of the word would be lost; another reader wouldn’t experience these implications.

Here’s another entry, more impressionistic than the first:

BIRDCAGE

yellow, orange, hope, trepidation, stasis, coyly silent, square, spacemen, warm concerned impenetrable space between two humans

Instead of distinct memories, here I had a scatter of associations—feelings, colors, ideas, states of being—and “spacemen.” (!) Again, nothing that would be necessarily obvious to a reader who wasn’t me.

After creating a lot of entries like this, it became clear to me that my problem was one of intention. I had specific, clear intentions to subtly imply all sorts of things, but by simply writing “birdcage” I was really, really not going to succeed. 

Examining my intentions in general gradually became a major focus for my revision process – though notably not my writing process, which I keep free, improvisatory, daring. Besides meaning, a writer can be intentional about line breaks, punctuation, voice, setting, character, style, form, the intended audience, and much more. Communing with myself about my intentions has helped me transfer my weird visions to the page much more successfully, so that in my 30s and now early 40s, when I show my writing to others, they may be moved in some way by it, rather than stumped.

A few years back I ran a workshop on the revision process, and created this useful chart: Poem Revision Quick Reference (click to download PDF). One way you might use it is how a pilot uses a pre-flight checklist—looking at each category of item, and just briefly making sure you’ve attended to it. If you use it that way, here are some example questions you can ask yourself, drawn from my own practice and from helping others revise their work:

• Did I intend to write with a particular structure, or did I do so out of habit? 
• Did I intentionally choose for a poem to be left-justified?
• Have I intentionally examined how I’m embedding meaning? 
• Have I unintentionally used harmful language, such as outdated identity/race/mental health-related terminology? 
• Did I intentionally assign a straight, cisgender white male identity to a character who is a composer/engineer/physicist, or did I do that automatically, without thinking?   
• Am I using a powerful, harmful thing (for example, slavery or sexual assault) primarily as a metaphor to insert power into my writing, and if so, could I insert power in a different way?
• Did I mean for the tone to be bitter? Cheery? Bored? Aloof?
• Did I choose to write in the first/second/third person or did I do it automatically?
• Did I intend for there to be a lot of detail, or would I like to simplify?
  

You could also use the chart as a generative or directive tool, exploring your own goals as you work your way around it. In this sense it can act as a reminder of the many creative ways you can approach your subject, or solve problems you encounter. For example:

• What does the scene I’m describing smell or sound like?
• What attitude does my voice or my character’s voice have?
• Can I insert mystery by leaving some aspect of the narrative unresolved?
• Would I like to intentionally employ some sonic or rhetorical devices?
• What if I changed the tenses to past tense? Present tense? Future tense?
• Could I try extending a metaphor to explore its limits?
• Does this piece need more white space around a section/verse/paragraph/word?
• What if I used multiple forms to present this work (poetry with line breaks, which becomes prose, which becomes a poetry comic…)?
• What if I broke this linear story/poem up into tiny pieces and presented it like a collage?

The goal isn’t to include all possibilities in your work, but rather to ensure you’ve made conscious choices that align with your intentions – and to discover and cement your intentions along the way.

I hope you find the chart helpful for your revision process—feel free to share it widely. It’s always evolving, so if you have ideas for additions or changes, let me know! 

Elisabeth Blair is a poet, manuscript consultant, and multidisciplinary artist. Her publications include two chapbooks, We He She/It (Dancing Girl Press 2016) and without saying (Ethel Press 2020) and poems in a variety of journals including Feminist Studies, cream city review, and S/tick. A full-length poetry memoir, because God loves the wasp, is forthcoming (Unsolicited Press 2022). Since 2018 she’s been a poetry workshop leader for the Burlington Writers Workshop in Vermont.

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