> Kinnell, I think, came up with the tongue-in-cheek idea for a writing
> course called "The Draft." He based this on how much composition is
> done on the computer, hence any "genesis" of the poem's growth is easily
> lost. The idea was to start with a presumably finished poem and work
> backwards, have the students invent earlier drafts to make the poem look
> as though it had a history. Well, of course they all have histories,
> just that those histories are internal rather than something that can be
> studied to tell us what?
>
> ken
That idea sounds like a way to inflict torture on the unsuspecting, Ken. A
little like having music students work backward from Louis Armstrong at his
peak to his earliest sputtering (at what 2? who knows, wants or needs that?)
Whenever I've seen a poet's early drafts what I've come away with is
permission to proceed with my own process. Once you have permission do you
really have to ask again? It's a little more interesting than biography,
i.e., this biography of the poem over that of the poet (die you fucking
cults of personality).
The best advice about writing I've ever received, and I've said it on this
list before, was from Philip Whalen when I asked how he got his poems to the
finished state. He said, "I write and I rewrite until it [the poem] looks
like I wrote it all at once." After that, the draft as archive has a rapidly
declining half-life (except for university libraries, rare book dealers,
profs and graduate students on the make, and other vampires).
In the case of the Avedon Collection, one, Richard worked everyday (60
years) until he died, amassing a huge quantity of work (mostly using an 8X10
camera); two, he made multiple prints of every negative, 3 to 300 (each a
final print); three, multiply 3 to 300 times 365 times 60 and you get "The
Richard Avedon Collection", a hell of a lot of cataloging!
Frank
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Frank Parker
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