Revision Process

[Lizzie]

I went it alone most of my life. Since hanging out here and putting some poems under the microscope and thinking a lot harder about other people's poems, I find that when I go it alone, as we all do at the birth of a poem anyway, the result is more appealing to me, I catch a better way to say it before it hits the page and I feel like my reach is a little longer. I like what the workshopping process has done for and to me. I write some dead stuff with good technique now but I always wrote an unknown percentage of shit. I think my strong ones are stronger now.

Ok, so workshopping doesn't keep you from writing crap, it just makes you more able to capitalize on the good stuff. That makes sense. And, as for writing dead things well, I say: Meeeeee too

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 it is pretty clear that none of us are poetic geniuses

Only history gets to decide this, 50 years after we're all dead.

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Do you think a poet can write a great poem in fifteen minutes? I do. And that makes things harder for me. That's a hell of a lot to have to live up to. But I believe in such ability. I admire and love the fact that a human being can be that good. And I like that that's how high the bar is that I'm trying to reach.

Whatever happened to the whole 'success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration' thing? Is it possible to do that, probably. I'm not going to spend my life waiting around for the muse to grant me such powers. It would be sad for me to think that a glorification of natural talent like this would get in the way of the actual 'doing' of poetry.