Editing Poetry

        Recently I've been trying to decide what poems to use for workshop and which poems I want to edit the most. I find myself unsure of which ones to choose because I'm not satisfied with very many. I sometimes feel they aren't very creative and have just been jotted down too quickly. I have been trying to read between the lines of my poetry to turn it into something that I probably hadn't thought of making it. 

I think that deciding where I want to go with a lot of my Muse work is one of the toughest parts. What did I mean at the time? What is this saying? are questions I seem to ask myself after reading poems created from my muse. Do you think that altering and editing much of your muse work takes away from it being 'muse' work?

I'm finding that I like cutting the fat technique the best. It feels liberating in a sense to scratch a lot of what I seem to think is irrelevant. After I cut the fat out though, it seems hard to decide where I want the poem to take itself, and I seem to overthink it much more than I had originally. I'm starting to enjoy the frustration of the editing process, though that is only when I become satisfied with what is written.

I often find that I have a hard time messing with poems that I put in Iambic because of the time that was originally invested to make it into meter-changing a poem despite the content out of meter almost pains me because I only think of how long it took me to make sure there was a certain syllable count, and to get the rhyme scheme correct. I seem to be more compelled to want to edit these particular poems due to their content, yet feel a bit sad changing the entire meter after I know I had thought a lot about it at the time. Just a few of my thoughts about editing, hope everyone else is having better luck!

-- Taylor Achin