Honestly, I don’t know which
awful truth about editing to begin with: that it’s entirely necessary? that it
has no natural conclusion? that it can make a poem worse?
A propos of my previous post,
Iris Murdoch would only write in a certain brand of notebook, longhand,
preferably with a Montblanc fountain pen. Late in her career, she discovered
that the notebook line was due to be discontinued. Panicked, she bought up
every one she could find, sufficient for the remainder of her 26 novels.
The longhand piece resonates
strongly with me. Not just for the tactile reasons I mentioned in the last
post, but because it makes editing a much richer experience. You can see
everything you’ve deleted. You can see what you have added and changed. You
witness the evolution of the piece as it unfolds, the work of it, the cutting,
planing, and sanding.
Below are two sets of my notes,
one inchoate, one closer to the end of a poem. In the first, stray words; aeronautical
definitions and terms from the book I was reading; the beginning of a verse. In
the second, the work of a stanza coming together; the repetition and
re-transcription of the few lines, trying to get them right. When a poem
reaches a certain strength, I sometimes number the lines so I can keep track of
where I am if I’m reworking a section. If
there’s a stanza format, numbering helps me hold to the line count and stay
with the rhythm, the shape, and the relative line lengths.
I guess when I start numbering the lines, it means it’s all
coming together.
No comments:
Post a Comment