One of the thorny questions a writer contends with is how to know when a work is finished. Revision is essential to good writing, but when is enough enough and how can you tell? Theoretically, revision could go on forever, but it has to end eventually or nothing would ever be published. Perhaps that point is reached when the writer finally throws his or her hands up in the air? As French poet Paul Valery famously remarked, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”
The whole question can seem ridiculous, and American poet Billy Collins penned a satiric poem, “January in Paris,” using Valery’s quote as a starting point. Collins writes:
I would see the poems of Valery,
the ones he never finished but abandoned,
wandering the streets of the city half clothed.
Most of them needed only a final line
or two, a little verbal flourish at the end,
but whenever I approached,
they would retreat from their makeshift fires
into the shadows -- thin specters of incompletion,
forsaken for so many long decades
how could they ever trust another man with a pen?
With my own writing, when I start to change words and then change them back again, I figure I’m getting close to being done. In general, I find that my first drafts are wordy and ridden of clichés. Then I tend to over-explain (a bad habit among teachers) in my second draft, which actually lengthens my already overwritten draft. Finally, in the third draft, I start to tackle the formidable job of cutting and pruning.
I fervently believe in revision. I’ve always doubted the Wordsworthian assertion that accomplished writing springs from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” preferring to believe that writing is a craft that rewards the hard labor of revision. Accomplished writing springs from a lot of practice -- the same as accomplished singing, carpentry, baseball playing, you name it.
As yesterday was Veterans Day, I am reminded of a poem I wrote earlier this year as a tribute to SFC Dan Murphy (U.S. Army-Retired), an old friend and fellow former soldier who died after battling a long illness. I wrote the poem below in a surge of emotion the morning after Murph died. Then I started to revise it, but I soon stopped, believing that tinkering too much with the poem would ruin its emotional intensity and honesty. Here is the poem; you can judge for yourself:
Lay Down Your Rifle: A Poem in Memory of SFC Dan Murphy, Boys from Leeds, RIP May 28, 2014
Lay down your rifle, old friend,
This you have earned, your eternal rest,
And we who followed you in war or peace are left behind,
We who knew you and loved you best.
You’ve gone away on that final dawn patrol,
A ghost in the shadows no foe can see,
No pain can touch you, no weakness, nor fear.
Take this soldier’s moment to be free.
Until that day when we too shall cross the river
And slip into the trees, and rally again on some distant shore,
Lean back on your rucksack, rest at ease old friend,
But hold your ground, and stay free forevermore.
-- written by John R. (Bob) Dial, former SSG, 1-105 Infantry, 27th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (L.I.), May 29, 2014
It’s not a perfect poem, and sophisticated critics would probably ridicule it as doggerel, but I still believe that it is complete and finished. The poem also reminds me that our freedom to write and express ourselves would not exist without the sacrifice of so many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Happy Veterans Day to all veterans. We must never abandon them.
© 2014 Bob Dial. All rights reserved.
