Every piece I've taken to poetry class this spring has been a rewrite. I hoped to come up with something entirely new, but so far the drafts folder has been my best source of material.
Every poet has a drafts folder. Even after multiple rewrites, you hesitate to throw away jottings, scraps, or neatly printed but hopelessly banal efforts, because there might just be a phrase or turn of phrase or an idea you can use later.
Arthur Sze, a breathtakingly original poet who has taught several times at Centrum, often cuts printed poems apart and tacks individual lines to the wall, to study or to rearrange.
"Save the cut out lines in a file," is his advice - especially for those lines you love the best, the ones that almost always HAVE to come out of the poem.
Partway through this class I realized I wasn't the only one mining the files for overlooked treasure. Several classmates have brought rewrites to class, and our teacher told us one evening that he is now working on a couple of poems he had consigned to his "notes" years ago.
Here's something that hasn't made it out of my "scraps" file yet - but there is one more class! (And it will disappear from this page soon.)
(Vanished)
And for another take on fascinating fragments of many past lives, try this website.
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