Frank - They have all said it already, and you have agreed, and I have been
out having a good ol'time, but I want to say just one more thing about
adding and subtracting from/to poems ...
Les Murray, a sometimes kind editor to some, once said to me years ago that
he had a surefire way of improving a young/new poet's work: Cut off the
first and last four lines. Brilliant. I thought it was just something
clever to say at the time, as one does in conversation when you have a
devotee listening (as if I'd bloody know that experience). (The ironic
tones are missing, but you get the drift.) So, I now check my poems against
this li'l device: lop off the first and last four lines. With me it is
often the last verse (three or four lines often) which is extraneous - and
this is after all my drafts and savage editing. However, to speak to the
other side of the idea,there is a story about Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara
that one poet had written a draft of a poem and showed it to the other.
I've lost which one did what. But the second poet said, Yes, that's good -
but where's the rest of it? So poet 1 kept writing, and it was one of that
poet's long but successful and popular poems. Does anybody know the names
to flesh out this tale? It's like gossip without the names of the
protanists at present!
My way is this: I take a poem to its limit in draft - and even then push it
some; but in the final draft, cut it back to the essentials ... My theory
is to let the reader share the creative load, the creative joy.

Thanks for the poem: I loved the 'hear', 'heart', 'beat' of it, and its
movement from words struggling to the surface at poem's beginning to words
singing at the conclusion. I could see it as a section of a poem in six or
seven sections, all utilising the same modus operandi. Just a thort, Frank.

Andrew

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Andrew Burke Copywriting
[log in to unmask] Creative Writing
http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
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