[annie nance]

How many poems do you work on at once? Do you have three or four (or more?) in the air at any given moment, or is it just one at a time?

annie

[Jayne Osborn]

Good question, Annie.

My usual practice is to work on one poem at a time, but always lurking in the background are poems for the comps I go in for, at D & A: The weekly Spectator, the monthly Oldie and Literary Review, and assorted other competitions such as The New Statesman and The Washington Post.

I don't do all of those every time, but if I feel inspired by the topic that's been set I'll have a go (with occasional success!), so I can be working on several things at once, though I do try to finish one before tackling another.

I revise some of my earlier poems quite often too, as the mood takes me, so in that sense I'm working on several poems at any given moment.

If you were asking what I prefer to do though, I'd definitely say that 'one at a time' is the way I'd rather write poems. I can't cope with too many balls in the air at once

Jayne

[Shaun J. Russell]

For the last couple of years, my answer would be "none," sad to say.

But typically it's one at a time for me. There has been the odd occasion where I've had a lengthier piece I've been working on and have written a short poem in the meantime, but that's only happened a couple of times that I can recall. Likewise, sometimes I'll be working on one poem and will wind up sectioning out a stanza for another poem, but I can't think of a time where I've worked on two regular poems roughly simultaneously.

Of course there are always scraps that one jots down that later become full-fledged poems, but I don't consider those in the same ballpark as "working on them at the same time."

[Maryann Corbett]

There's a kind of not-quite-gelled stage of poem ideas in which I might toss around several, looking for something that feels gelled enough to work on.

Once something does feel whole, that shiny new poem idea is sort of all-consuming, so when I'm working on a new draft it's definitely one at a time.

In more dry times, when no new ideas happen and when I'm revising older poems, refashioning groups for submission, or figuring out what went wrong, I'll go back and forth from poem to poem.

[John Whitworth]

That marvellous painter Klimt used to have three or four canvases on the go at once. It stopped him working and working at one canvas obsessively until it was quite spoiled. I think the same thing can happen with poems. Two or three at once is good, I think.

[Cyn Neely]

I'm with John on this, as a painter and a poet. I have several pieces that are being worked at the same time, usually. I think it doesn't hurt to be working on a few at once. In general though, especially for me in painting, ONE of them commands most of my attention until it feels more settled. But when I get to a point where it feels sticky I head to one of the others, and this sometimes clarifies things for the one I had to leave. Like John says, it helps control the obsessiveness. I am sure everyone works different ways, but that's how I work.

[W.F. Lantry]

Just one. Get it right, as best one can, move on to the next. That's Ovid's advice, at least:

"Good huntsmen only follow fleeing game
leave taken quarry for the bird that flies..."

And if it's good enough for Ovid...

Thanks,

Bill

[Michael Cantor]

Define "work on at once". During the course of a day? Possibly two or three. A week? I might poke or tweak at, or ponder, five to ten - sometimes even more.

It seems I work differently than most. Increasingly, I don't spin off a poem and put a stamp on the envelope. I start poems, get fed up or stuck, back off, and attack again another day, or month - or year. I have a "work in process" Word folder that has about fifty files in it of poems in stages ranging from sketches/ideas to drafts to completed-but-shitty, and I keep poking at them. Every once in a while, a finished poem emerges.

[John Whitworth]

A poem, said Valery, is never finished. It is only abandoned. He said it in French, of course.

[annie nance]

Great responses; thanks for sharing. I'm just always interested to know the process of other folks, I suppose. Michael, I'm glad to know there is at least one other out there with a collection of "finished but shitty". Even the garbage, I have a hard time trashing.

I was just curious. It seems to always be feast or famine with me, three or four or five at once, or nothing at all. Maybe they feed on each other.

Annie