revision / poets perspective

In reflecting on my progress as a poet these last few months, I have found to have fallen in love with revision. I came to university knowing I would probably do so, but with resistance, holding on to my first draft originals like I’d be betraying my authentic emotions if I touched them again. That’s not at all the case. I’ve been able to express myself more thoroughly and sufficiently both for the sake of others and myself. I’ve learned higher vocabulary, the art of experimentation and what it brings to my creative process, and what it feels like to forget that you’re three hours past your bedtime because you’re lost in your own piece. I have never felt that way about anything else, and I’ve come to be aware of how intensely passionate I am about poetry more so than ever. Not for any one reason, but because it is every reason my values are values, and my purpose is purposeful. There have been challenges insofar as finding ways to adjust the words or portions of my pieces that feel imprecise. While I’m still learning the tools to articulate things to the best to my ability, it can be difficult trying to voice what I know and feel I want to say accurately. It’s not as much perfectionism as it is honoring the emotion/subject of the piece. Revision has helped even this, as it is the time spent gathering ways to clarify my vision and practicing those tools to see what works and what doesn’t, that ultimately rewards me with what I, myself, didn’t begin with realizing. That reward has motivated and reminded me that poetry is the common factor to everything I care for. And this; poetry—to somehow bring what quakes with color into what begins as dull. To show the common world what vision I see as truth, the light of God and the love in simplicity. And never settling by dismissing the poetic nature that makes all things alive to me, but instead find new ways to implement it delicately or ferociously, no matter what may meet me to survive in a world so ruled by broken humanity. Many ways are forced upon us to support ourselves, especially as creative writers, but I would much rather know that the small bits I give to the world are entire and honest, than be solely supported and breath empty life into my atmosphere.