To understand the construct of a poem is to dive into the form and play with it. Like Leggos, take individual pieces, put them together. If the result doesn’t please you, pull them apart and rearrange.
The good thing about writing daily is that you accumulate lots of materials. Half-baked poems, one liners, singular words; they may be useful sooner or later.
Amy Clampitt in the Paris Review said she revised a poem up to twenty-six times. Mary Oliver: forty to fifty drafts. Did they save every scrap of revision? Were they counting? How did a poem emerge and change through all the manipulations? Was the sense of play always present?
“Word Play” by Jill Ault.
