The Art of Revision - 1

This is a column I hope to do from time to time that shows the steps I took and the thoughts I thought in revising my poems...

It all started with an open prompt... This column explains in detail how I revised and edited a new poem, so that it changed from a 7-line stud to a full rhyming poem. The poem in question can be found here: http://allpoetry.com/poem/4401353

It all started with a contest in which I found an open prompt... my favorite type of prompt: a word bank. This word bank contained 10 words: Shape, Song, Sweet, Artistic, Fragile, Condemned, Cold, Broken, Stolen, Dismiss.

First, I read through the words, and throught about their definitions. The first word was 'shape', and I thought about what that word meant: It could mean a triangle or square, and also just the shape of something, like a figure. As a verb, it could mean to give shape to, or to create... I went through each word like this, and there were endless possibilities.

Then, I tried to link each word with another one in a verse. I read through the words and scribbled down this:

Shaping fragile whispers
With the tip of the tongue
There's a gently loving song
Hidden in each one

It takes real artistic skill
To conjure murmers soft and sweet
... (I couldn't think of what to write here)
... makes my heart beat!

Of course, that was barely a poem at all, and completely without meaning. But it was something to start with. Here, the revising began. I began thinking about this verse, and what it could mean... I wasn't sure if the contest would allow 'shaping' instead of 'shape', so I changed that first of all. So I wrote "shape your fragile whispers" instead... and since I had the word "your", why not speak in first person? I combined every two lines and made a couplet:

Shape your fragile whispers with the tip of your tongue
I hear a gently loving song hidden in each one.

I didn't like the second half of the poem, and so I deleted it completely. I decided to continue illustrating affection in passionate words, and I came up with this:

Your breath is light and precious, and your heart more precious still
For it is the heart and not the mind that possesses artistic skill.

Yay! I now had four lines that didn't sound that bad... but these lines were only the beginning of a poem, and they led the reader on... and they led me on as well. I messily wrote 8 more lines to go after that, so now my poem looked like this:

Shape your fragile whispers with the tip of your tongue
I hear a gently loving song hidden in each one.
Your breath is light and precious, and your heart more precious still
For it is the heart and not the mind that posseses artistic skill.

I've condemned you to my love, which rushes out in one large tide
Auscultate my soul, my dear, and I will not cringe or hide.
I've lost my fear of everything, but not my fear of you
My images are stolen and I don't know what to do.

Shatter these cold visions of ice; I want my stolen dreams
I fear our emotion will drown us in its never-ending streams.
I'm dismissing all temptations until I obtain my greatest one
So shower me in whispers from the tip of your ice-cold tongue.

That's a little better now, I said to myself. But then, I reread it, and said to myself: Shya, what the heck are you trying to say in the second stanza? The words are all over the place. And you call yourself a poet.

So I lifted my pencil once again and began crossing it out. (I had done all the editing before this on allpoetry, but my computer time was up so I printed the draft out.) I started thinking about how to rewrite the second stanza when it occured to me that I had not used all of the words in the word bank; I was missing the words 'broken' and 'sweet'. I took all this and had an inner dialogue with myself, that kind of went like this:

Me: Okay, Shya, let's start with the first line. The phrase "which rushes out in one large tide" sounds forced and kind of cliche... and it doesn't go with the poem anyway.
Me: Okay, I'll change that... but to what?
Me: You can try an imperative sentence, telling the person to start loving you already or something like that...
Me: Uh... okay... how about I just tell him to stop being so cold?
Me: Yeah, I'm fine with that.
*jot jot jot*
I've condemned you to my love, so please stop being cold
Me: Done!
Me: Alright, second line. It's really not consistent with the third line. First you say "auscultate me, I won't hide", but then you say "I haven't lost my fear of you", in other words, "I'm afraid of you". You may have mixed emotions sometimes, but I won't have this!
Me: Okay, okay, chill. (There's the teenager in me doing the talking again.) Since I just rewrote the first line ending with the word 'cold', I'll have to rewrite the second line so that it rhymes, right? *crosses out second line* Now what rhymes with cold?
Me: Aold, Bold, Cold...
Me: You fuddydud, cold doesn't rhyme with cold! How about 'hold', as in, 'I need a hand to hold'?
Me: Isn't that a little too cliche for you?
Me: Well, can you think of anything else?
*jot jot jot*
I've let go of everything; I only want your hand to hold
Me: There, it's better than it was five minutes ago. Next line.
Me: We should just get rid of the next two lines... they say something completely different than the rest of the poem. Besides, we've already used the word 'stolen' in the last stanza.
Me: Okay then. *crosses out last two lines* Now what?
Me: Uuuuummmmmm um um um.... let's use the word 'broken'. We can rhyme that with 'broken' and there we go! We used a word bank word, and the word 'spoken' can describe the whispers we've already mentioned.
Me: Alrighty then.