Hi Michael,
Since you ask: yes, I do also obsessively reread and revise, down to the semicolon, and delete poems from MSS. Gombrich distinguishes medieval painting, which involved, to simplify him, drawing a perfect unicorn in a single draft, from Renaissance painting, which involved endlessly redrafting the seen rather than perfectly representing the ideal. There's a photo of Picasso drawing a perfect centaur in midair with a flashlight in a darkened room. I am much more like the Renaissance painter there.
What I post on the Sphere varies in age. My last posted poem, "Things with Mike," was written in 2012, but when traveling (like now), I do often post new work, which is more to hand. Otherwise, it's generally stuff from my MSS, which go back mostly through 2012, though some things date back to 1982, when I was much younger.
A thesaurus and the OED are precious to me. I don't rhyme much, so don't use a rhyming dictionary. It may be time, as Mme de Stael said after Corinne, to invest in one.
There's that Wilbur quote that what's hard is not the writing but the thinking. I am in complete agreement with him. I started writing a poem a day after reading about a poet who wrote a sonnet a day for a year; a task I would find impossible, not to say arid.
My only experience of a serious workshop, prior to the Sphere, was the Iowa Creative Writers Workshop in 2017. That may be why I am continually amazed at the cuts and splices suggested on the Sphere to work I've gone over many times, over weeks or years, and think finished (i.e., I've whittled them down to tinkering with commas). Which I guess is an answer to your question. I would love to have another pair of eyes when rereading my work, but sadly do not.
A final note that lingers with me is Frost's old remark that writing unrhymed verse is like playing tennis without a net. To write like Frost or Wilbur is, I think, very difficult indeed.
FWIW, since 2016, my MSS seem to make semifinals or finals in MS. prize competitions a few times a year. Maybe I should stop announcing my process in the blurb section, it may be self-defeating. But that doesn't mean I'll stop doing what I can to improve my craft.
Oh - I've published my share of books over the years. They are in prose.
Cheers, and thanks for the question,
John
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