Revision Process

[shemthepenman]

I mean doing better in another poem, a poem under different circumstances, having nothing to do with the failed one. Rather that than botch it then keep trying to fix it. A novelist comes out with a book that gets panned and that's that. He doesn't keep releasing a different version until more people like it. You learn from the critique of others, but I think you should have work to stand for the times before you learned these new things. Your newer work is better than your older work but your older poems are still poems.

just when i thought i was out, they pull me back in! we should try to make this the longest threaded discussion on the pigpen. . . or even the WORLD!

yeah, well i am sure that all makes sense to you, and fair play. and i can feel myself arguing from a dogmatic position that i probably do not entirely agree with. however, i should just like to point out that in my original comment i was talking hypothetically about infinite revisions and immediate edits. i recognise that practically edits may not be justified. and of course, there is a certain psychological barrier, as well, in some cases.
also, your novelist example complements what i had said before. a novelist doesn't keep releasing new versions of a book until more people like it [although you are conflating popularity with quality, but maybe i'll come back to that later]. but you, we, are in the fortunate position of being able to edit here to our hearts content, consequence free. also, a novelist has certainly self-edited, but will also have let people he respects and trusts read it and listened to their criticisms and suggestions and possibly make edits accordingly. but, i will concede, if you are going to publish your poems, and that publication has a deadline, then you don't have the luxury of experimentation and should probably leave it in the hands of the proofreader. and let's face it, by that stage it has already gone through enough hands, under enough pairs of influential eyes.