A printable
Ten steps for revising a poem
A checklist from The Poet's Craft, written by Stewart Ferris. Use it on a draft that already exists. It will not write the poem for you. It will show you the lines that are still pretending.
Download the checklist as a PDF to keep beside the desk or to hand to a workshop. The steps below are the same text.
1. Read it aloud
Stand up. Read at the speed you would use if someone were in the room. Mark every place you stumble, add a word, or run out of breath for the wrong reason. Those marks are the revision. Do not smooth them from memory.
2. Cut the throat-clearing
Cover the first two lines. If the poem still begins, the first two lines were you arriving at the desk. Start where the object or the voice is already present.
3. Weigh the last word of each line
The last word gets a little extra stress from the white space after it. If that word is “the,” “and,” or “of,” ask whether the noun or verb can move there instead. A weak line-end makes a weak break.
4. Cover the next line
For every enjambment, hide the following line with your hand. The visible line should still earn its keep. If it dies without the sequel, the break is decorative. Move the break or earn the reach.
5. Scan the stresses
Say the line as if you mean it, and mark the syllables you actually hit. A heap of stresses at the end is often an adjective you do not need. A metronome reading that you cannot speak is not the poem’s metre.
6. Replace one abstract noun
Underline nouns you could not point at or quote. Change one of them into a thing with a temperature, a sound, or a position in the room. Leave the others only if the poem is willing to be abstract on purpose.
7. Cut the explanation
If the last two lines tell the reader what the image meant, try the poem without them. If it collapses, the image was not finished. Repair the image. Do not restore the caption unless the caption is the twist.
8. Interrogate the rhyme
If you can predict the rhyme before you arrive, it needs to be a joke, a spell, or a devastating simplicity. Otherwise slant it, delay it, or spend it on a more exact word and let the chime go.
9. Title it last
A title is the first line a stranger meets. Do not repeat the poem’s best phrase. Locate the poem, or set an irony the poem cannot say from inside. “Poem” is not a title. It is a surrender.
10. Leave it, then cut five words
A day later, remove five words that the poem still makes sense without. Then stop. Further fiddling is often fear of sending the poem into a room. The checklist is finished when the cuts are finished.
Work top to bottom once. A second pass on the same afternoon usually puts the throat-clearing back.