03-21-2014, 12:14 AM
When your mind bounces rhyme off rhyme, like ping pong in your head, and you have momentum: sometimes it feels right, but later it seems like you've overdone it, or that you wrote things that don't make a lot of sense, or things that could have been written better if you slowed down and considered other possibilities. There are lots of possibilities, some are good but have to be sacrificed for the poem as a whole, some aren't very good and hurt the poem as a whole, detracting from anything good that's in it.
Sometimes it works, and you can come out of a rush of words with something worth keeping. But even then, you should read over it again and again, balancing each word with the others. The meaning, the multiple meanings, the sounds, the tone, the rhythm, the rhythms. Balancing each stanza, in some way, with the others. Each word, each line, each sentence, each stanza.
Sometimes it works, and you can come out of a rush of words with something worth keeping. But even then, you should read over it again and again, balancing each word with the others. The meaning, the multiple meanings, the sounds, the tone, the rhythm, the rhythms. Balancing each stanza, in some way, with the others. Each word, each line, each sentence, each stanza.