How do you know when a poem is done?

[Julie B. K.]

I'd appreciate some insight into the process of self-editing your haiku ...

Some haiku come to me fully formed, but that is the rare exception.  Usually I re-work them until I have an "aha!" moment and then I tweak the edits until I am reasonably happy.  But some poems -- argh!  I rework them and rewrite them until they turn into other poems and then they turn back to themselves and finally my whole page is a bunch of chicken scratches and nothing seems right.  For poems like this -- the ones that seem to almost work out but not quite -- what do you do with them?  Shelve them?  Finish them as best you can and move on?  Tear them up and start over?

seventeen syllables
hidden within this haiku
a year of words

Julie B. K.

[cat]

Hello, Julie,

In my experience, there are poems that are never going to work out, there are poems that will work out eventually, and there are poems that are easily edited into their best form.  I had one just today that I felt could not be improved upon the first draft (what a rare gift from the muse that is), and it turned out that my poet-friends who read it thought so, too.  But that's about a one-in-one-hundred occurrence.

The more you write and revise, the more you can perceive those poems that either can't be brought into a finished form or that end up so far from the moment as to make them irrelevant.  Once I have that realization, I move on to a haiku that actually has a chance of being well finished, as I feel that is a better use of my time.  Those that I have lost faith in, I put in a folder called "Unfinished Haiku."  I do not look at those poems until at least six weeks have passed, for that is the length of time it takes for me to come to them with fresh eyes.  You may find your own time span is either longer or shorter, but what's essential is that you can read as though you have not seen those words before -- almost as though someone else wrote them.  Sometimes at that point I can see my way to finishing a haiku, but sometimes I can't.  There are poems in my "unfinished" folder that have been there for years, little monuments to flawed technique, skewed perspective, unworkable ideas, and cliched thinking.  And that's all right.  It's unrealistic to think that everything we write is going to be publishable.

The ones that are worth finishing, I know when they're done because they feel right, they feel complete.  If they've been through the workshopping process, the consensus is that they're ready to go.  ("Send it out," someone will say.)  If they haven't been through the workshopping process, I look at them for sensory imagery, seasonality, effective juxtaposition, flow, and musicality.  When they meet my standards for all those elements, I figure they're ready to go.  And at that point, one of two things happens:  they get accepted and published, or they come boomeranging back.  If they come back three times, I know they need a further going-over.

One thing I never do is throw them out, no matter how bad they are.  Sometimes, a fragment from one failed poem and a phrase from another will come together and form a haiku better than either of the donors could ever be. 

The last thing I'll say is that there is definitely a danger in overworking any piece of writing.  It can totally lose its freshness and end up sounding labored, desperate, derivative, or written by committee, its original idea lost in a welter of words that no longer come close to the experience that inspired them.

cat

[Edward Zuk]

Cat has been quite thorough in detailing her experiences.  I want to add a different perspective.

I never consider a poem to be done.  As Valery wrote, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

I will occasionally go through my published (even anthologized) work and change a word here, a phrase there, in case I have a chance to publish it again in the future.  I will send a haiku out only when I've seemed to exhaust my possibilities of improving it.

I think my approach is atypical.  I've had discussions about this with Michael Welch, who's published more haiku than I have by several orders of magnitude.  He finds that there's a moment when a haiku "clicks shut" for him.  Whenever I've felt this about something I've written, I will inevitably give it a thorough rewrite in another week or two.

I have completely abandoned haiku that change too drastically - in my experience I am either trying to fit too much into a single poem, or else I'm trying to manufacture something that isn't there.

[cat]

I will send a haiku out only when I've seemed to exhaust my possibilities of improving it.

Hello, Edward,

You have put it so succinctly!  Exhausting the possibilities for improving a poem, yes, that is it.

I was interested to read that you continue to revise published work.  That must be acceptable in haiku?  I have wanted to do that on occasion, but had the nagging feeling that once a haiku was published, it was the way it would have to be forever.  While my chapbook was being edited, I was asked to change a few things, and I did, but I worried about offending the journal editor who originally published those haiku.  I would feel so much better to know that this is okay in haiku, where one word truly can make it a different poem.

Oh, btw, do you send a revised published poem out as a reprint, as a new poem, or as "an earlier version of this haiku was published in . . . "?

Thanks!
cat

[Don Baird]

There's a kind of "click" for me and I know the poem is done ... it embodies what I have in mind or in view.  But, oddly enough, a year or two down the line, while reviewing my poems, one could strike me in a different way and then two possibilities occur:  1)  I make a slight edit;  2)  I write a new poem from the old one.  There are a few though, that are what they are and I will never change them -- that's firm -- well, unless I do! ::)

;D

Don

[Edward Zuk]

I was interested to read that you continue to revise published work.  That must be acceptable in haiku?  I have wanted to do that on occasion, but had the nagging feeling that once a haiku was published, it was the way it would have to be forever.  While my chapbook was being edited, I was asked to change a few things, and I did, but I worried about offending the journal editor who originally published those haiku.  I would feel so much better to know that this is okay in haiku, where one word truly can make it a different poem.

Oh, btw, do you send a revised published poem out as a reprint, as a new poem, or as "an earlier version of this haiku was published in . . . "?

Hi Cat,

It's acceptable to keep revising a poem after publication.  You'll find "Poem X appeared in Journal Y in an earlier form" on the credit page of many poetry anthologies.  I can't imagine that any editor would take offence.

I've never sent out a revised haiku that had been published earlier.  They still count as published poems, even if revised.  When I've been approached by the editor of anthologies like the Red Moon series, they've been open to minor amendations.  In these cases, I gave them the choice of accepting the haiku as originally published or my revision.

[cat]

Thank you, Edward.

That clarifies it nicely.

cat

[Lorin]

Hi Cat,

It's acceptable to keep revising a poem after publication.  You'll find "Poem X appeared in Journal Y in an earlier form" on the credit page of many poetry anthologies.  I can't imagine that any editor would take offence.

I've never sent out a revised haiku that had been published earlier.  They still count as published poems, even if revised.  When I've been approached by the editor of anthologies like the Red Moon series, they've been open to minor amendations.  In these cases, I gave them the choice of accepting the haiku as originally published or my revision.

Right on, Edward.

...and to Julie: there are some poems that want to be kinds of poems other than haiku, try as we may to make them haiku. That's good! Not every poem is a haiku, but give yourself the freedom to write all kinds of poems. The experience of writing haiku (in my humble opinion but also in my experience) will make your other poems better, sharper. (if you ever get the time to write other sorts of poems!) It's all good.

cheers,

Lorin