cleaning / morning / writing and revising

[supercheesegirl]

Last night I got serious and cleaned the apartment. Vaccuumed the whole place, scrubbed the bathroom, mopped the kitchen and bathroom. And then put everything back where it's supposed to go. Then after that I got to feeling really really really sad, most of which was cat-related. For the record, talking to my mom about the cat is Not Helping.

Comments

[birdmaddgirl]

i was wondering about your methods, actually.

[supercheesegirl]

It has a lot to do with rhythm. If there's a line in the poem I especially like, or that seems particularly solid like there's no other way I could break it, I'll listen to the rhythm of that line--not anything specific like iambic pentameter, but how many beats in the line, and how the words sound together--and then see if that rhythm wants to be in the rest of the poem too. Usually it does. I tend to write in a four- or five-beat line, I've found. And then if there are other line breaks that suggest themselves (I'll find maybe two or three line breaks per poem that want strongly to be that way), it's interesting to see how those breaks resolve themselves around the rhythm, or don't, and then I have to find a way to preserve the break that I want and the rhythm that the poem wants