Every poem is a living thing, an experiment in feeling and image, an exploration of psyche, an artist’s creation—a perfect example of crystalized subjective experience. Because the eye of the critic (and journal editor) is notoriously subjective, it is impossible to predict what they will love or hate. But it is possible to polish your poems as best you can and to avoid common craft choices that many editors have historically found distasteful. In other words, to publish work in literary journals, it is important to revise your poems meticulously so that it is their content and not their craft that an editor passes judgment upon.  

In this workshop, we will discuss concrete revision strategies, with an eye toward identifying your personal poetic values and developing a revision methodology based on them. Craft topics that will be discussed include beginnings and endings, diction, register, line breaks, titles, image and image progression, and form and content. We will revise poems you bring from home and discuss avenues for future revision and expansion.  

By the end of the course, writers will have developed a toolbox of revision techniques that they can apply to their poems to make them as “clean” as possible for editors’ eyes. 

In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend; workshop writing you bring from home.