I gave my first and only poetry reading when I was seven years old at a ward talent show. I wore my yellow bathrobe and a pair of black glasses I made out of a pipe cleaner, so that I would look distinguished. And I recited my second-grade poetry, dancing around for emphasis at appropriate places. I was just young enough to not be embarrassed by myself, to rejoice completely in all these words I had strung together.
I’ve lost some of that exuberance. Now, like Moroni, when I write I “behold my weakness.” (Ether 12:25) There’s that great moment after writing a draft, when you just read the poem or essay over and over and think, this is amazing. But afterwards, I come off the cloud and start beholding the weakness of the writing. This is not a bad thing; it’s the first step to making weak writing strong.
And thankfully, weak writing can be fixed! Here is the progress of my poem “Ultrasound,” which the kind editors at Segullah have included in the Spring issue, Tabernacles. I have also included some ideas I think about when revising my own work. I have marked the lines I want to discuss in each version; I have also marked the “general revision principles” in case you would rather skip to them than skim through all my bad drafts. 
OB Visit, 1.0
Expose my belly: swollen, white, and marked
with winding lines. Within’s a bumping child
who’s trapped by blood and waters, liquid prison, just as I
am trapped by him”“ from now until I die I’m bound
to find the way to feed this child, and in
twelve weeks no cord will nourish
with as little effort as it now does”“
I’ll set him free and bind myself
all in one fearful push,
a binding I elected, one I wanted
one I hoped and feared at once
embracing birth and we both
must learn to breath.
Comments: 1.0 has the essence of the final version, that idea of birth as release and binding at the same time (I had just read Sharlee Mullins Glenn’s excellent poem, “Blood and Milk,” before I wrote this, and I had that on my mind). There are several lines in here that never made the cut into the final version: “From now until I die,” which is a cliche. It is okay to use cliches in rough drafts, where you have to just get it all on paper, but bad to allow them in the final version. I also cut “in twelve weeks no cord will nourish with as little effort as it now does” because it is wordy, and also melodramatic. “Nourish with as little effort” made me sound like a martyr, woe is me. I wanted to express the difficulty of having a baby without coming across as a martyr, or in other words, without demanding that the reader think a certain way about the situation.
General revision principles: Reading good poetry can help you write good poetry. Watch out for cliches. Condense or eliminate wordy phrases. Avoid melodrama and telling the reader how to think and feel.
Visiting my OB, 28 Weeks: 2.0
Expose my belly: swollen, white,
and marked with winding lines.
Inside’s a bumping child. He’s bound
by blood and water, liquid prison,
tissue home.
I listen to his heart: it beats
an even hundred forty beats.
Eight weeks ago I watched
this heart, a blurry form, pulse. I saw
the shape of arms and hips, the thin
clenched hands, the wound up cord.
In his release, his freedom
I am bound.
Does ultrasound make real
Comments: I changed the wording of the first two lines to make the first line shorter. I like ending the lines with the words “white” and “lines,” there’s a nice assonance going on there. I took out the word “trapped,” which I had used in the first version. I didn’t like the negative connotation, although I guess “prison” has that as well. But I’ve emphasized the word “bound” more, because being bound to each other is more positive than being trapped.
I did not have any imagery like this in the first version. I replaced the vague melodrama of “find a way to feed” with the specific “thin clenched hands” and “wound up cord.” Because I wrote this at a doctor’s visit eight weeks after my real ultrasound, I added the words “eight weeks ago.” Those words did not make it into the final version, because the fact that the ultrasound was eight weeks before I wrote the poem was not really relevant.
Then after writing 2.0, I wrote this note to myself:
Without the pictures it’s easy to pretend there’s nothing inside. But we are bound together forever, and this cord that we cut is really just silly”“everyone talks about cutting the cord, it’s a cliche, but in life, when you cut the cord, what you actually get is the beginning of a newer and more permanent bond. How can I make that into poetry instead of prose?
I’m tied, by cord and heart, to him.
General revision principles: Add specific, detailed imagery to support or replace any vague ideas. Edit out words that may refer to your experience writing the poem, but interfere with the poem’s overall impact. Write about your poem. Try to say what you mean in prose, and then change it back to poetry. This works sometimes. Sometimes, though, it happens that what started out as a poem turns into an essay. Lucky us, Segullah accepts both!
Visiting my OB, 28 Weeks ”“Version 3.0–
Expose my belly: swollen, white,
and marked with winding lines.
Within’s a bumping child, who’s bound
and fed by blood and waters, liquid prison,
tissue home. Eight weeks
ago I watched his blurry
pulsing heart. I saw
the shape of arms and hips, the thin
clenched hands, the wound up cord.
In his release, his freedom
I am bound, a bond
I chose, one I embraced
the way I will embrace him
gentle, holding firm. Both of us
will cry when he’s set free
Both of us
must learn to breathe.
Comments: This is more like what the final version is. From here I played with wording. The most important change I made was the lines “one I embraced / the way I will embrace him /gentle, holding firm.” That is vague, and doesn’t really capture what I meant to say. It ended up as “one I embraced /with gentle fear.” “Gentle fear” seemed to capture the idea better for me, and it also is shorter.
General revision principles: Eliminate vague words. Condense the language! Take out unnecessary words.
Visiting my OB, 28 Weeks ”“Version 4.0–
1 Expose my belly: swollen, white,
2 and marked with winding lines.
3 Within’s a bumping child, who’s bound
4 and fed by blood and waters, liquid prison,
5 tissue home. Eight weeks
6 ago I watched his blurry
7 pulsing heart. I saw
8 the shape of arms and hips, the thin
9 clenched hands, the wound-up cord.
10 We both await release.
11 His freedom binds me more,
12 a bond I chose, one I embraced
13 with gentle fear. We both
14 will cry when he’s set free.
15 We both must learn to breathe.
Comments: “We both” is much less awkward than “both of us.” So I changed that. I like the rhythm and repetition of it. I showed this poem to Michael Collings, the wonderful poetry editor over at Irreantum. He did not like the repetition of “we both,” but when I told him that I did, he said, “Keep it, then!” I also added “gentle fear,” as I mentioned before.
General Revision Principles: Eliminate awkward wording. And in the end, it’s your poem, so you can keep what you think is important.
Ultrasound (5.0)
Version 5.0 changed the title and deleted the words “eight weeks ago.”
Comments: I played with the title for a few versions. I started with “OB Visit” and then went to “Visiting my OB, 28 Weeks,” and then decided that the OB had nothing to do with it. It’s really about the ultrasound, so I went with that. With the title change, I also deleted “eight weeks ago,” as I mentioned earlier.
General Revision Principles: Titles are subject to revision too!
Ultrasound 6.0
This version is the same as 5.0, except for one important line:
We both await release: the pain
and freedom of an empty womb.
I sent 5.0 to the instructor of my independent study writing class. She liked it, but suggested that I elaborate on what “release” means. Thus this line change, to “We both await release: the pain / and freedom of an empty womb.” That was what release meant to me, both pain and freedom. I’m grateful for her suggestion, because it greatly strengthened the poem.
General Revision Principle: Get feedback from someone who knows poetry and is not related to you (or, if they are, who will be able to discuss the problems with the poem anyway) and implement it.
At this point I sent “Ultrasound” to Segullah, which kindly accepted it for Tabernacles. In the mean time, I attended the AML Writing Conference. Michael Collings held a poetry workshop, and looked at it. He suggested I change line 2 and eliminate the “and,” so that it would read “marked with winding lines.” He also suggested I modify line 3 to read “Within: a bumping child, bound.” I liked these changes, so I asked the poetry editor at Segullah if we could modify it accordingly, and she agreed.
General Revision Principle: Even when a piece has been accepted for publication, it can still be improved and worked on. Again, feedback from people who know what they are talking about is very helpful. Although receiving feedback can be hard, and I would love for everyone who reads my work to be awed at my eloquence and say “I have no changes for you,” I am learning to say “THANK YOU!” whenever I get a suggestion. If I want to write really well, I need the humility to behold my weakness.
Michael Collings’ suggestion led to the final version of “Ultrasound,” which you can read here .
I am tickled to see it in print. Despite my early ambition, this is the first poem I have ever published. I feel a little like my seven-year-old self, reading with dancing and joy my weak words made strong.
One final revision note: There are so many more things to say, but this post is long enough already. I didn’t even begin to talk about rhythm and meter, among many other important aspects of poetry. What do you focus on when you revise your poetry? What exercises, techniques, and questions help you most?
Emily, this is fantastic!! Thank you for giving us this glimpse behind the scenes. It takes courage to share early drafts. And your final version is a true work of art!
Wow. Emily, you’ve taken us on an exciting and insightful journey here. Thank you. And I can’t begin to tell you how honored I am that “Blood and Milk” inspired you in writing your poem, even if just a teeny bit.
I write poetry sometimes. The quality is probably about where your 7 year old verse was, maybe a little below, so as a rule I don’t show it to anyone. It’s so fun to see what your revision process looked like. It reminded me of that old cliche about there is no good writing–only good rewriting. I need to learn how to rewrite poetry.
Kathy–thank you.
Sharlee–I loved “Blood and Milk.” It was in the back of my head as I sat writing in the doctor’s office.
I would love to read anything you have to add about revising.
Angie–It’s a good cliche. I have a lot of really bad unrevised poetry in my notebooks too… I’ll read through it and think “this is terrible!” but then there’s always a line or two that grabs me and makes me think maybe I could turn it into something.
Writing “Ultrasound” was different than some of the other poems I’ve done. Sometimes I get a good idea, and it all comes out pretty well, and it’s just tinkering from that point on. But “Ultrasound” was work, especially the first few drafts. It showed me that I could turn a mediocre beginning into something better if I revised through enough drafts.
Yes, for me at least, poems are always work. I’m a little impatient with beginning writers who aren’t willing to embrace the “hard labor” part of writing. Someone once showed me her notebooks full of poetry. “You’ve got some great images here,” I told her. “Some really good lines. Now you just have to start the strenuous task of turning them into poems.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I never touch them once they’re written. They spring, fully-formed, from my head.”
Not much you can do to help someone with an attitude like that.
My best poem (it’s by no means great, but it’s respectable, I think), “Mimesis Upended” took me a year and a half to write. I used to project all the various drafts of this poem on overheads for my students at BYU to see. They were astounded. “All this for one little poem?” they would say.
I love this quote by Toni Morrison: “The best part [of the writing process], the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over. That’s the thrill of a lifetime for me: if I can just get done with that first phase and then have infinite time to fix it and change it. I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did. I try to make it look like I never touched it, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of sweat.”
Amen.
Thanks Sharlee! I used to think that my poetry came out fully-formed too. Then I read and analyzed more poetry and started seeing my own with greater clarity. This was very depressing at first, but it was the first step to learning how to write better. I am still learning! There is so much.
I love the Toni Morrison quote too. Thank you!
I’m also glad you showed the work it takes to birth a poem. It takes a while to get used to the work of producing a poem. Most poets start out like that, thinking their poems are finished when they are only just begun. It’s whether or not they progress to making revision a habit that ultimately defines whether they will really be poets, I think. It still surprises me, though, how many people who ask me to look at their poetry are shocked when I make suggestions. (Sometimes I even say, “Good. You know what you want to talk about. Now start over fresh and do it again.” That’s hard to hear.) I don’t know why people think that poetry is unlike any other craft in that it requires vision AND work, and that skill grows with dilligence. You’ve done such a good job of showing this!
(And all it takes for me to quit judging those beginning poets and humble myself is to look back on my own first attempts. Ouch! Some of them are even published and once in a while someone will say, “I read such-and-such of yours,” and I wince because I’m better than that now! But then, imagine what I’ll think of my current work in 20 years when I’m REALLY good?)
This was so interesting and helpful. I love good poetry and am in awe of those who write it. For me, writing poetry is much more difficult that prose because it must be precise. It is such a challenge to express an idea or feeling in such a concise medium. Also, the elements Emily mentioned (rhythm and meter) make it especially challenging. Thanks for the tips Emily! And thank you to all you wonderful poets who put in the time and work to produce such lovely work.
Darlene–This is so true–why do people think that poetry is unlike other crafts? I don’t know…
Jennifer–I am also in awe of good poets. The more I write, the more I am amazed by their skill and work ethic. But I believe that this post and discussion are hopeful, in that they show how someone who starts out with something not-so-good can, through many drafts and revisions, turn it into a respectable piece of writing. Writing poetry is not some lofty inaccessible thing; as Darlene said, it’s a skill that grows with diligence.
Thanks to everyone for your comments! I need to take my own advice and go revise some more.
First, I must say how much I love your completed poem! To be honest, I liked the first one as well–which surely indicates that I am a novice–but my eyes were opened as I read through your process of revision. Thanks for sharing!
I got the impression that you wrote while you were at the doctor’s office. Is that correct? If so, I am curious to know if you continued to revise the poem in the same location. Do you feel strongly about where you compose for any particular reason–perhaps to project your mind back to where it was when you previously wrote? Do you “warm-up” as a poet?
Christina–glad you liked it; thanks! Thanks for commenting and looking me up.
I wrote the first draft in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. I didn’t revise it there; I took it home and did several versions in my writing / scripture journal, and then I moved to the computer. For poetry I like to write the first few drafts by hand. Prose I usually do the whole thing on a computer, except maybe the very first draft. But there’s no one right way. Whatever works.
As far as writing places, I wish I were more faithful about carrying something to write with me wherever I go, so I could jot down ideas better. That’s the ideal, I think: just keep something with you wherever to write ideas down, and then work it out when you have time. A really good idea is a really good idea, and worth saving, or it gets lost.
Elder Scott talked in our Stake Conference a few years ago about doing the same thing with spiritual promptings; he always carries something with him to write notes down. I need to do more of that.
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