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. […]
As I brood over my newest batch of poems, and cast a crabby eye on the previous batch, as yet unpublished, it seems to me that editing can be focused on three levels. There’s the level of the text on the page: Are the verbs active and surprising […]
This list of 22 poem hacks by featured blogger Carmen Giménez Smith on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog gives lots of great ideas to help revise poems when you get stuck. Ideas like: dropping the first stanza, identifying the best line to make sure the rest hold up, […]
I’m posting here the Craft Tip I contributed to my craft book, The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop. You might find it helpful as you work on new poems this month. You might also find it useful for working on poems you wrote months, or even years, ago. […]
Sometimes you get to a certain point and you just don't know what to do with a poem. You might have many drafts and you don't know what's working anymore. You've lost perspective. And on top of that, maybe you're surrounded by a whole bunch of other discarded poems […]
I’m posting here the Craft Tip I contributed to my craft book, The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop. You might find it helpful as you work on new poems this month. You might also find it useful for working on poems you wrote months, or even years, ago. […]
