Are any of them are done-done, though?

A day of revision.


"These Are the Trees..." has been chopped into thirds. One third is gone (forever?). The third about birds has become its own poem, "This is the Unkindness of Trees", which I feel is quite successful. And finally, a third remains that is, perhaps the finished(?) and successful(?) poem I've been poking at for a bit now.


Another poem that has seen many many many months of revision has reached a point of... something. Maybe it's done. I don't hate it anymore. It's even got a not-awful title: "Feast". Mr.H needs to read it now, although it was his reading of an earlier incarnation that made me hate it so much and for so long. Something in it was confusing to my reader, but how to write the poem without spelling it all out proved challenging, to say the least. I definitely needed the time it took to stand back from the work, to detatch myself from the language and images I'd fallen in love with.

I was able to speed up that process a bit with "These are the Trees..." and if it's as done as I hope it is, I can be proud of myself. Being able to chop up your own creation is a much needed skill in all writing, and the quicker I can get it done, the better, so hopefully practise makes perfect. Or not hopefully. It would be nice to write more pieces that don't require an axe to finish, actually.


A few more poems have made it to the back burner stage, having seen some tweaking: "Poems Need Winding Up", "The Last Bottle of Red Rooster Merlot", "Our Bed is the Forest In Storm." They'll simmer and then I'll give them another stir and see how they are. Another poem might be done done, "Words to Spring", but it's one I keep going back to; it may be well written but I don't care for it much. A poem about poems, meh.


It's funny how some poems can simmer for great lengths of time and I don't mind, like "Words to Spring", but others, like "Feast" absolutely plague me to no end. I find myself haunted by some poems, unfinished works that claw at me, desperate to resonate. I never wish for them to go away though. I'd be so poetry-lonely without them tugging at my sleeve, my ears, my eyeballs...