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Now I understand more of the poems I read in here... haha.
Honestly, I don't do as vigorous rewriting as most serious poets do, who almost never draft a poem less than 5 or 6 times, and sometimes upwards of 30.
The idea behind redrafting is that the first draft is the outline, it outlines the emotion and the idea. Then you go back in and tweak the language around, you make your points clearer, less stream of consciousness, you take out awkward phrasing, and incongruous images/mixed metaphors/things that just don't fit with the rest of the poem.
I'll usually do a rough draft, then proof it for spelling and grossly awkward phrasing, though I usually read through each part after every few lines unless I'm bursting with an idea, and just write it all down quick, then go in. Then I go through with a fine comb, checking for any problems with the linearity I didn't intend for, with making the images perfectly clear, and make sure the metaphors aren't mixed etc. Then I let it lie for a little while, few days, and go back to it and go over it all over again. I've only written a couple pieces that came out even more or less exactly how the final product turned out to be. You do need to be careful when editing though, not to take all the feeling out of a poem in the name of craft, you can't skewer all poems to the bone with the best of results. But, you can't abandon craft altogether if you want it to be a good poem, and not a journal entry poem.
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"Those who know they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity." -Nietzsche
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This isn't a place for people to improve. This is a support group, where everybody just pats each other on the back and give words of encouragement. -predicate on the poetry realm
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Linear Mode
