I have begun work on my book of poetry, a project it turns out I have attempted at least twice before. I managed to self-publish a few copies of an early book of poems way back in the before times of 2006. Then again in 2009 I started to put together another collection that ultimately went nowhere. Twelve years later, I’m at it again.
The good news is that my collection of poetry has grown since then. I’ve had a few instances of intentional poetry writing, and mostly know where all of those poems now live. The bad news is that many of my old poems are truly terribly. They aren’t so melodramatic (some are) or over-wrought (some are) but they are so much word salad. It appears that I was being so reductionist in some of my early work that I would merely regurgitate words onto the page, arrange them so, and call it a poem. The ideas mostly come through, but the execution is execrable.
Thus begins my work. I am sorting through the really old poems in recent days. Some, I am simply deleting. Don’t worry, future archivists, nothing valuable is being lost. Trust me. Others, I am re-working. Keeping a copy of the original, I am re-writing the poem as needed to produce something that current me, and hopefully future me as well, will be happy with. If nothing else, I will have recorded a progression of the poem through time. But I truly think I have matured as a writer and have a better handle on technique and the methods of communication that are so important to good poetry writing.
While some may balk at the idea of re-painting an old piece of artwork, or scraping the canvas to start again, at least in this digital age the original can continue unharmed. Using the tools of my era, I neither have to erase or eradicate the original to create an updated poem. JRR Tolkien would frequently update manuscripts and early drafts of the Lord of the Rings and other works. His son Christopher Tolkien often spoke of how difficult it was to decipher early versions of his dad’s stories because the elder Tolkien would erase early pencil drafts or simply write over it in ink. At least for me, the digital landscape affords me a clean way to write and re-write.
Poems that don’t require revision I can organize for insertion into my collection. While there are precious few of those, at least there are some. I am also still trying to tease out any themes or commonalities in my poetry so that I can order them into groups. I have noticed quite a few nature poems, in the vein of Robert Frost (and others) that I can put together. I know I have a bunch of pop-culture poetry that will go together. The others? Well, I’ve got more work ahead of me.
In all, I am thoroughly enjoying the work, which is great for the continuation of labor. I wasn’t sure if this project would be a drudgery or a delight, but it is definitely the latter. I have given myself six months to complete this task, and have high hopes that I can meet my deadline. And here I will leave you with a little tone poem for winter, one of my pastoral poems that I re-worked yesterday. I hope you like it.
Waiting
naked trees
wave slender fingers
through frigid breezes
a grey forest lies
deep in snow
a meadow slumbers
silent sentinels
watch for warmth
under peaks of ice
a simple man 