The Editor from Hell

Last Summer Scotland’s The Dark Horse published Sam Gwynn’s “How Many Poets Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb,” five hilarious parodies of Wendy Cope, Dana Gioia, Joe Kennedy, Tim Murphy and Dick Wilbur. My parody took off on my poem “Harvest of Sorrows,” and was 24 lines of hypermetric trimeter. But after it, Sam printed the same poem “as revised by Alan Sullivan:”

The rains don’t come,
And prices drop.
He sinks in darkness
Like his crop.

Five years ago Sam sent us a forty-eight line meditation on a devastating ice storm. Alan sent him back a 32 line version. Two months later Sam told his West Chester students that by the time Alan finished with it, it read:

Storm comes.
Trees fall.
I’m here.
That’s all!

When Dave Mason sent us “Night Squall,” arguably his finest poem, Alan cut it by a third, and Dave said, “Son-of-a-bitch, you’re right!” In our circles Alan is grudgingly but affectionately called “The Editor from Hell.”

He wasn’t always like this. During his decades as songwriter and science fiction novelist, he would just point out infelicities of usage and the like. The brutal blue pencil came to him seven years ago, when he agreed to edit my big collection, The Deed of Gift, for Story Line Press. Section 5, Early Poems, was problematic. In 1977 Dick Wilbur had chided me: “Just because you’re writing on the themes of Cavafy doesn’t excuse you from the task of sufficiently charging your language.” In 1978 he wrote, “I suspect you’re beginning your English sonnets by writing the killer-diller final couplet, then working backwards.” I was guilty as charged. So wherever you see a pentameter sestet in my early poems, it used to be a sonnet. Here’s what remains of one of those beheaded efforts.

To an Arrogant Young Man

Narcissus, gazing in a forest pool,
knelt on the moss to kiss his mirrored face
and drowned in his own image’s embrace,
a fate befitting such a haughty fool,
whom you rival in cruelty but who
was twenty times more beautiful than you.


Some poems required less drastic surgery, but in some, pentameters were reduced to tetrameters, and tets to trimeters, thereby “charging” the line by ridding it of useless modifiers. Dana Gioia, leafing through some dozen before and after jobs, asked me plaintively “Does he hire out to other poets?”

Here’s the oldest poem in the book as it stood for twenty years.

For the Theban Dead

The Sacred Band of Thebes is overthrown.
On the field of slaughter lover by lover sleeps
as iron-hearted Philip of Macedon
sags on his bloody horse and weeps.

And here’s Alan’s metrically competent rewriting of it.

The Sacred Band is overthrown.
Lover by slaughtered lover sleeps
as iron-hearted Macedon
sags on his bloody horse and weeps.

But Alan doesn’t limit himself to editing us mere mortals. The first time he tried to edit Wilbur he told him that the line “Burdened by every lack,” in “The Ride,” one of Dick’s masterpieces, was marred by clumsiness in the usage of lack as a noun. Charlee Wilbur so bridled at this temerity that we had a sneaking suspicion she had had a hand in writing that line. Later that same evening we were dicussing “April 5, 1974,” Richard’s uncannily graceful imitation of Robert Frost, a poem Dick was reluctant even to publish because it was such vocal mimesis. We expressed our huge admiration for it, but Alan told Dick he should change “The freeze was coming out,” to “The frost…” He argued it was better usage and suggested that as long as it was a tribute to The Great One, Dick might as well be honest about it. Well, both suggestions were rejected.

Two years later, though, Alan saved Dick from a terrible mistake. After he’d bashfully read us a new poem, “Mayflies,” Dick said he was uncomfortable with the last line: “How fair the fiats of the caller are.” “I think I should change fiats to dictates,” said Dick. Alan shouted “Fiat Lux!” The matter was settled, and Charlee told us that Alan and the Bible had saved the day.

No, he doesn’t hire out to other poets. Instead he offers his insights freely to the citizens of the Eratosphere, and we’re all lucky to have him. If there are any errors in usage, any clumsinesses in this little memoir, it’s because I haven’t let him edit it.

Tim, a fine tribute to a fine editor and a fine poet. Among my many weaknesses as a writer is my tendency to excuse bad technique when I believe the feeling will carry the day, and then to turn around and imagine that flawless technique will compensate when the feeling is superficial or inchoate. I sometimes have to read Alan's comments very carefully to make out what difference his proposed changes would make to the purpose of the poem, but I've become confident that they will help. Even when I decide to ignore them, I'm doing so from a position of expanded knowledge, of greater perspective. I have a number of poems that Alan has improved in ways that even he doesn't know about.
Richard

Tim, a telling and touching tribute to Alan. Though I have suffered pain, confusion, and dissonance at times, his replies have always nudged, better, pushed me to working harder. Most of us, I'd guess, deeply appreciate the tough-love approach he takes to the craft.

------------------
Ralph

[This message has been edited by RCL (edited January 28, 2001).]

Tim, what a delight coming across this. I've always trusted honesty over niceties, particularly when it comes to poetry. I think of Alan as the real thing.

I hope he's GOLing.

wendy

Alan and I exchanged poems with some regularity for two years after the first West Chester conference in 1995, and we have exchanged poems sporadically since then (a little more often since we took up the Able Muse gig). It has been an extremely helpful relationship for me--both learning how to criticize and how to accept criticism. I had been working in splendid isolation until West Chester. Alan is indeed very tough, and passionate--he takes your refusal to accept one of his comments harder than a tough comment on one of his own poems. So many poets just want you to admire their work--it takes integrity to say and accept hard things. Eratosphere is a great thing, but it is also good to find others on the same wavelength for more intensive review of your work--better to be humiliated by a friend than to be humiliated putting something bad in print (and boy have I done that!).

Alan: By the way, I just got your long piece jammed into my box and will get to it as soon as I can, but it looks like it might take me a while!

Given how upset some of our newcomers are with Alan's criticism, I wanted to bring this back to the front page of Eye. Lighten up folks!

Thank you.
Lary

Alan's lucky,
honest and brave.
Did he ever work
for Burma Shave?

Just kidding http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif
Hey Alan- have we had the cyber handshake yet?

Sharon P.




[This message has been edited by momdebomb (edited March 17, 2001).]

**Interesting**

Alan, I guess folks love ya or hate ya.

I've put my own backhanded appreciation on a different thread, so I'll just say here: thanks, Alan. He's definitely had a strong positive impact on my poetic development.

Paul

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif