For some reason I’ve been thinking about this poem lately, written March 3rd, 2001. At least that’s the date on the file. Just now I decided to go ahead and have a look at it, maybe make sense of why it’s ‘calling’ to me all these years later.

As I read I couldn’t help my embarrassment—a reason why I rarely visit my older poems—and found myself editing as I went. To my surprise, I discovered I had already saved an earlier version a page down in the document. And, discovering this, I undid all my edits, copied the second draft and pasted it down on another page, then reapplied my edits. Might be interesting to look over revisions of older poems some day.

My edits were half-hearted. I just don’t really think this way these days. But it’s visual. Most of my older poems weren’t so. And the metaphor is strong. Perhaps I’ll write a new poem based on this idea, changing the voice and refocusing the approach entirely. But, for now, I thought it might be interesting to share this old poem.

Note that the original was center justified, and the second draft left justified. Here I’ve just about randomly indented the lines as I read, almost out of curiosity. The raggedness of the lines now actually feels more like the poem itself. I’ve kept the line-caps, which is how I used to write all my poems, both structured and free verse.

So interesting to see how my approach to poetry has changed. Sometime I should print up everything I’ve written to date and just read through it. I can put everything that elicits a strong desire to vomit in one pile, in another all the poems that don’t seem to evoke much reaction at all, and in the golden pile the poems that still somehow move me, either as the author or as a revisiting reader. Maybe I could do something with that golden pile, like bind it up and pop it off to a few publishers. See what happens.

Well, here.