Revise. You know you want to.

We continue with the subject of line breaks because I took the two-word line poem posted previously to a weekend workshop with Erin Belieu and was told (gently, of course, because that is how people behave in those things) that the form was distracting.

I greatly recommend taking advantage of workshops if you can afford it. In them, you get to find out what really works as long as you are not so full of yourself that you can’t hear what people say without getting all defensive and such. If you can’t do that, just quit writing right now, because nobody is that much of a genius that they get it right on the first (or second or third…) try.

What I learned in that workshop is that stanza structure says just as much about your poem as the words.

“[It's] always keeping the reader off balance, looking for completion,” Erin advised us. “[It] is not generous.”

You need to keep the reader moving through the poem, she said, so in this case, the two-word lines made the reader stop to wonder why I made the decision to use that form and, ultimately, did nothing to enhance it. Eventually, I got around to revising it to this:

This Sweat

Startled you ordinary Sue
not Spiderman inch two
size 10s, toes over skinny ledge
look down several stories
know fear, gust or
wrong move
can bring what some
call folly tumbling
to ugly death
yet you, like Petit’s
high-wire act, you invited
this sweat.

Teeth clenched
back flat, palms clammy
fingers splayed against stark
white granite
remind yourself to breathe
to act as if
life’s normal.

Then you notice that
delivery man greeting that
grocer unloads fresh veggies
gulls squawk, wait to
swoop upon black
wilted lettuce leaf
this view holds, catches
calms you.

Now it could be
ages or a while anyway
until you decide
you’re done, then crawl
back inside one
lone open window
where there your friends
sit, lounge, laugh butts
to couch watching
holiday college football
bowl games.

Erin also told us “the toughest part in poetry is going from good to great.” According to her, there is only one centimeter of difference.

Did revising my poem make it “great”? I doubt it. Greatness isn't really why I write poetry (thank goodness...too much pressure!). However, I do know that participating in workshops and revising are absolutely necessary if poets want to get to the halfway decent mark.

Kathie Meyer, the Infant Poet