[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Others have probably expressed my take adequately enough, but here's mine FWIW.

Bill asks: "When does the extreme revisionist become bad for himself?"

Well, if it's compulsive, then it could be a problem, but otherwise, unless it means neglecting other important areas of his life, I would say "Never". Breathing new life into old pieces is, after all, what writing poetry is all about.

I'm a revisionist myself, and although I do occasionally feel like I'm hacking at a stone that should be left, I soon get over that. Often I see it as a good way of warming up when I want to write new stuff and don't have a clue what that new stuff will be. Sometimes I'm probably kidding myself, but hey, then I do sometimes actually succeed in improving some old stuff.

Whitman revised Leaves of Grass throughout his life, and comparing the first and final versions is interesting. I think both versions are good. The later one is more or less a slightly expanded version of the earlier one. Basically he added some afterthoughts, which seems fair enough to me.

George Mackay Brown has been criticised for leaving out some of his more "risqué" pieces (and believe me, they're hardly risqué) in his later selections of his work, but I think that is unjustified. Should he have to have his work pinned to him as a constant reminder of what he once wrote, or should he not rather have been allowed to dissociate himself from work which he no longer felt was representative of the writer he had become?

What it boils down to for me, I think, is that I choose to update some of my pieces so that when/if I recite them tomorrow, they will represent me where I am today in relation to those pieces, rather than where I was yesterday in relation to them. The new versions don't mean the old ones were inadequate.

Having said this, I will admit that I do like to think that when I change something then I'm improving it. It must be a kind of suspension of disbelief.

Duncan

PS The piece I've got on the current issue of The Flea was one I wrote 18 years ago. Seven years ago my cousin said I should add a final verse so that it ends on an upbeat. This January I did.

[Michael Cantor]

I am also a continual reviser, even after poems have been accepted, even after they've been published. Like Jean, I regard that as being conscientious - working your trade. Any finished poem contains compromises - words that don't quite say or sound what you want to, but it's the closest you can come; phrases that take the poem in a slightly skewed direction, but you like the sonics, etc. and etc. Look at the poem two days later - or two years later - and you may very well see a better compromise. I tweak and I tweak and I tweak.

[Julie Steiner]

On the other hand...

I sometimes picture myself as the poetic equivalent of a hoarder, surrounded by broken junk that I can't throw out because it has sentimental value, and because I fully intend to get around to fixing it someday.

And while I'm busy replacing, for the umpteenth time, the faded silk flowers on a wreath I made back in my college days, the living flowers just outside my front door are going to waste. Poetically speaking.

So there's something to be said for letting go of the familiar old past, so that one can be fully present in the dangerously unpredictable now.

No bonfire, no phoenix.

[Mary Meriam]

Originally Posted by Julie Stoner

So there's something to be said for letting go of the familiar old past, so that one can be fully present in the dangerously unpredictable now.

I agree with this, Julie. Well said.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Julie Stoner

I sometimes picture myself as the poetic equivalent of a hoarder, surrounded by broken junk that I can't throw out because it has sentimental value, and because I fully intend to get around to fixing it someday.

I seem to be at the opposite pole. I fall so thoroughly out of love with many past poems that I have trouble looking back at them. The dangerously unpredictable now is so much more thrilling.

Is there a middle-ground rule, something like, "Revise in a disciplined manner, not constantly, but when called upon to give the poem a fresh look"?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Julie said it much better than I did, but that is what I was trying to say.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

I am also a continual reviser, even after poems have been accepted, even after they've been published. Like Jean, I regard that as being conscientious - working your trade. Any finished poem contains compromises - words that don't quite say or sound what you want to, but it's the closest you can come; phrases that take the poem in a slightly skewed direction, but you like the sonics, etc. and etc. Look at the poem two days later - or two years later - and you may very well see a better compromise. I tweak and I tweak and I tweak.

This really resonates with me. It's the exact same reason why I continually revise.

I also agree a little with Julie though -- there are some poems that I can't bear to read after I've written them, but I learned fairly quickly that just because I don't particularly care for them doesn't mean they're either bad poems or that others won't like them. I've been known to submit a poem I consider "weak" as part of a larger submission on a certain theme, and had the "weak" one not only accepted, but extolled. And that's one of the reasons why I have no problem anymore with revising work that has already been published etc., as revision is a personal thing, as is the original impetus for the poem itself. Editors may take a poem in a certain form, but that doesn't mean that you, as a poet, no longer have the personal connection to the work. Look at it like renovation to a house. It may be a beautiful house and fetch a lot of money on the market, but if you just don't like the veranda or the hardwood flooring in the den, there's no shame in changing it to something you feel fits your home better.

[Ed Shacklee]

I'm among those who continually revise -- though I've only submitted pieces in the last year, I've found that doesn't change the pattern one bit -- but what I'll take away from the comments by Julie and Janice is that I should be more inclined to put down the red pen and wonder, what was it I was really trying to say, what is my thought contrariwise to this, and why won't I step out of this shadow, and look again?

Ed