As a poet who moves about in the world, I talk to non-poets—friends, co-workers, relatives, strangers at bars—more than I talk to poets, and when our conversation turns toward my study of creative writing, I find that my non-poet companions will usually have similar questions:
The first two questions are easily answered!
(1) Unlike a Master's, an MFA is a terminal degree, meaning it is the highest level of study available in its field. Creative writing MFA programs focus on the craft and mechanics of writing. PhD programs focus on the industry of scholarship surrounding writing. They are different things, different modes of study, and I wanted to improve my creative writing, not my academic writing—which could certainly stand to be improved, but isn't where my interests lie. PhD programs aim to produce scholars. MFA programs aim to produce artists. Both pursuits are critical, and the Venn diagram is closer to one circle than to two, but the distinction nonetheless exists, and it has meaning.
(2) When I graduate, I hope to be a better writer with more connections to other writers; I enrolled in the program to be in the program, not to graduate from it! Sometimes, when people choose to learn something, they are motivated specifically by a desire to learn, rather than by a desire to capitalize on the "proof" of that learning. Sometimes, we do things just because they're enjoyable! What are you going to do with all those movies you've watched, huh? With all that music you've loved? How is your favorite song going to help you get promoted, bucko? You've spent so much time listening to it! What are you going to do with that song? (Even if your favorite song does help you connect with your boss and pave the way for a promotion, is THAT the REASON you LOVED IT?!)
Ahem. Of course, 99% of people asking these questions ask them in good faith and genuine interest! I do not direct my sarcasm toward any of them!
The questions about revision take more time to answer—but they are also more interesting. In fact, I cannot stop thinking about my answers. And I've learned that whenever I can't stop thinking about something, I need to write about it.
So. What does it mean to revise a poem? And why do poets revise?
- An MFA? But don't you already have a Master's? Why not just get a PhD?
- What are you going to do with that? When you graduate?
- "Revision"? What do you mean? Poetry is feelings, you can't revise feelings!
- But that poem is already published! Why would you still be revising it?
The first two questions are easily answered!
(1) Unlike a Master's, an MFA is a terminal degree, meaning it is the highest level of study available in its field. Creative writing MFA programs focus on the craft and mechanics of writing. PhD programs focus on the industry of scholarship surrounding writing. They are different things, different modes of study, and I wanted to improve my creative writing, not my academic writing—which could certainly stand to be improved, but isn't where my interests lie. PhD programs aim to produce scholars. MFA programs aim to produce artists. Both pursuits are critical, and the Venn diagram is closer to one circle than to two, but the distinction nonetheless exists, and it has meaning.
(2) When I graduate, I hope to be a better writer with more connections to other writers; I enrolled in the program to be in the program, not to graduate from it! Sometimes, when people choose to learn something, they are motivated specifically by a desire to learn, rather than by a desire to capitalize on the "proof" of that learning. Sometimes, we do things just because they're enjoyable! What are you going to do with all those movies you've watched, huh? With all that music you've loved? How is your favorite song going to help you get promoted, bucko? You've spent so much time listening to it! What are you going to do with that song? (Even if your favorite song does help you connect with your boss and pave the way for a promotion, is THAT the REASON you LOVED IT?!)
Ahem. Of course, 99% of people asking these questions ask them in good faith and genuine interest! I do not direct my sarcasm toward any of them!
The questions about revision take more time to answer—but they are also more interesting. In fact, I cannot stop thinking about my answers. And I've learned that whenever I can't stop thinking about something, I need to write about it.
So. What does it mean to revise a poem? And why do poets revise?
Disclaimers
Not all poets revise. Some poets don't even use words in their poetry! That's well outside my wheelhouse—I'll defer to those poets on those perspectives!
Plenty of poets who do revise hate revising. I am not in that camp. Revising and editing are the stages of writing that make me happiest, and because that orientation colors my perspective, it's worth confessing at the forefront.
There are intelligent, scholastic approaches to this topic that would reference brilliant writers and cite sources and collect materials to support the argument. But, as previously mentioned, I do not think or operate in that way, and the readers who prefer that kind of approach have likely already sought it out and do not need me to repeat that research for them. I'll point to a few quotes and videos, but I'll leave out more of the relevant discourse than I'll reference.
Disclaimers disclaimed, on to semantics!
Plenty of poets who do revise hate revising. I am not in that camp. Revising and editing are the stages of writing that make me happiest, and because that orientation colors my perspective, it's worth confessing at the forefront.
There are intelligent, scholastic approaches to this topic that would reference brilliant writers and cite sources and collect materials to support the argument. But, as previously mentioned, I do not think or operate in that way, and the readers who prefer that kind of approach have likely already sought it out and do not need me to repeat that research for them. I'll point to a few quotes and videos, but I'll leave out more of the relevant discourse than I'll reference.
Disclaimers disclaimed, on to semantics!
What is "poetry"? What is "art"?
DANGER! DANGER! WE HAVE ENTERED IMPOSSIBLE TERRITORY! Great way to start, yeah?
Most poets offer up their answer to this question at some point. I'll offer mine—but it's sticky. Defining anything is always harder than we're socially primed to expect.
Poetry purposefully heightens literal meaning through indirect, non-literal communication.
Most art does this. Movies and novels have subtext; music communicates information through sound. Video essayists communicate indirectly through body language and lighting and set designs. Visual art relies almost exclusively on indirect communication, transmitting an experience from artist to viewer while only rarely using words at all.
But poetry lives here. This is what poetry is entirely oriented toward. Other mediums utilize indirect communication, but (except for visual art) their primary motivation is likely something else: to tell a story, to be catchy, to comfort. I argue that indirect communication is the primary motivation of poetry. Poets manipulate language to super-charge it—and a poet succeeds at poetry when utilizing poetic devices as purposeful tactics of expression. Poetry results from the deliberate use of language, from harnessing the music and plasticity of language to do something more meaningful (literally, more full of meaning) than making a direct statement.
For example, typing out the words "Hope feels good" is a statement, but it is not art. It is not poetry.
Poetry takes an indirect, circuitous route toward communication for the purposes of making the reader feel what is being communicated, for the recipient of the art to experience something, intuit something, consider something from different angles.
I can tell you "Hope feels good," and perhaps you will believe me, agree with me, understand me.
But you won't be moved. You won't have a meaningful experience. The words aren't impactful to you because they are so familiar, so obvious. You won't feel anything—you certainly won't feel hope.
If, on the other hand, you read a poem by Emily Dickinson that begins:
Most poets offer up their answer to this question at some point. I'll offer mine—but it's sticky. Defining anything is always harder than we're socially primed to expect.
Poetry purposefully heightens literal meaning through indirect, non-literal communication.
Most art does this. Movies and novels have subtext; music communicates information through sound. Video essayists communicate indirectly through body language and lighting and set designs. Visual art relies almost exclusively on indirect communication, transmitting an experience from artist to viewer while only rarely using words at all.
But poetry lives here. This is what poetry is entirely oriented toward. Other mediums utilize indirect communication, but (except for visual art) their primary motivation is likely something else: to tell a story, to be catchy, to comfort. I argue that indirect communication is the primary motivation of poetry. Poets manipulate language to super-charge it—and a poet succeeds at poetry when utilizing poetic devices as purposeful tactics of expression. Poetry results from the deliberate use of language, from harnessing the music and plasticity of language to do something more meaningful (literally, more full of meaning) than making a direct statement.
For example, typing out the words "Hope feels good" is a statement, but it is not art. It is not poetry.
Poetry takes an indirect, circuitous route toward communication for the purposes of making the reader feel what is being communicated, for the recipient of the art to experience something, intuit something, consider something from different angles.
I can tell you "Hope feels good," and perhaps you will believe me, agree with me, understand me.
But you won't be moved. You won't have a meaningful experience. The words aren't impactful to you because they are so familiar, so obvious. You won't feel anything—you certainly won't feel hope.
If, on the other hand, you read a poem by Emily Dickinson that begins:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
Then, suddenly, you are having an experience. You are floating. Something has lightened in your chest, something has released its grip inside you. Dickinson's poetry does not just communicate the idea that hope feels good, it uses formatting and rhyme and imagery and line breaks and sound and breath to move you, to do something.
The effect on you is not an accident. It is not a side-effect of divine inspiration.
The poet made conscious, intentional choices to cause that effect.
The effect is a result of word-science!
If that seems impossible to you, unbelievable to you, then you are underestimating writers. It's time to stop! Believe me when I say that good writers are employing deliberate tricks and tools toward a desired end, as opposed to being possessed by some external impulse to funnel art into your mouth without the writer's active or conscious involvement.
Art is interesting because it reflects the perspectives and capabilities and decisions of the humans who made the art. If a human is not making purposeful choices in the creation of something, then it is not art. Beautiful, maybe; meaningful, maybe; but it is not art.
I love cross-stitching. When I follow a cross-stitch pattern, I am making something beautiful, something meaningful to me, something that requires skill and technique, but I am not making art. When I run an existing image through a pattern generator, I am not making my own decisions about the construction of that pattern, and I am not making art. If, however, I laboriously construct a pattern out of an image I designed, if I pick the colors to use for its stitches, if I decide what should be a full stitch and what should be a quarter stitch, all because I want the end product to look a certain way to human eyeballs? THEN I am an artist!
Having established at least my working definitions of poetry and art, we can move on to discussing the particular processes and motivations of revision in poetry.
The effect on you is not an accident. It is not a side-effect of divine inspiration.
The poet made conscious, intentional choices to cause that effect.
The effect is a result of word-science!
If that seems impossible to you, unbelievable to you, then you are underestimating writers. It's time to stop! Believe me when I say that good writers are employing deliberate tricks and tools toward a desired end, as opposed to being possessed by some external impulse to funnel art into your mouth without the writer's active or conscious involvement.
Art is interesting because it reflects the perspectives and capabilities and decisions of the humans who made the art. If a human is not making purposeful choices in the creation of something, then it is not art. Beautiful, maybe; meaningful, maybe; but it is not art.
I love cross-stitching. When I follow a cross-stitch pattern, I am making something beautiful, something meaningful to me, something that requires skill and technique, but I am not making art. When I run an existing image through a pattern generator, I am not making my own decisions about the construction of that pattern, and I am not making art. If, however, I laboriously construct a pattern out of an image I designed, if I pick the colors to use for its stitches, if I decide what should be a full stitch and what should be a quarter stitch, all because I want the end product to look a certain way to human eyeballs? THEN I am an artist!
Having established at least my working definitions of poetry and art, we can move on to discussing the particular processes and motivations of revision in poetry.
The Perspective of Poets
It's all a draft until you die. –Ellen Bryant Voigt
Though I struggled to find a source for this quote, American poet (and scholar!) Ellen Bryant Voigt is broadly said to have said, "It's all a draft until you die." Meaning, poems are never finished, never set in stone, never unavailable for improvement.
This cuts against the ideas most people have about art: If you publish a book, that's the book, the end. If you release a movie, please do not come back and change the movie, we liked the first movie you released, and that's what we wanted to watch. A painting is painted and then hung in a gallery and if the painter comes in every day to make little adjustments, the painting has become performance art, and maybe you need to calm down and leave your painting alone.
Poetry operates a little differently. A poem is typically published in a literary journal or magazine then published again/later in a poet's collection. For particularly successful poets, the poem may even be published still more times in anthologies and collected volumes. The industry anticipates that poems may be revised between those instances of publication. The first version of the poem exists, it remains. Readers can continue to enjoy the first version of the poem, if they prefer that version. But publishing multiple versions of a poem enables a poet (and their editors) to continue improving upon the work, moving nearer to the poem's intended effect. Personally, I love to see the evolution of a poem, to compare and contrast different versions.
I suspect anyone involved in theater will understand. Theater changes and shifts. Each performance is slightly different, slightly unexpected, slightly re-framed or reconsidered. Because theater happens live on stage again and again, night after night, across any number of productions with different actors, directors, costume designers, choreographers, there is no one "version" of the play or the musical that is "the" version of the play or the musical. Even when a play or musical is filmed, when one particular performance by one particular production becomes inextricable from the collective understanding of the work (e.g. the May 1989 filmed production of the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods), the existence of that "captured" work does not prevent future adaptations, interpretations, or performances from also "being" the same work of art. If you attend your local high school's production of Into the Woods, you can say you've seen Into the Woods, even if you missed out on Joanna Gleason's definitive performance in 1989.
Poetry can be performed, and in that way, it sometimes shares much in common with theater. Many poets write specifically toward the idea of performance, and many will read their poems differently every time they stand on a stage.
But when non-poets express confusion about my revision process, they aren't reacting to the idea of performance adjustments. We intuitively understand that no two live performances will ever match exactly, and we'd never expect a performer to stop performing simply because they already performed something once (though, certainly, that happens, particularly in performance art).
When non-poets are taken aback by my ideas of post-publication revision, they are reacting to my lack of satisfaction with a published product.
"That's already published. Isn't it 'done'? Aren't you finished with it now?"
For poets who relate to the Voigt quote, the idea of "done" is antithetical to our conception of the artistic process. If I find a way that a poem can be improved, why wouldn't I work to implement that improvement? Why wouldn't I want my poem to be better? I am not here to finish writing poems, to be "done," to stand on a mountain of my writing and feel satisfied or complete and never write again. I am here to play, to explore, to experiment, to protect my motivating dissatisfaction from the lie of "accomplishment."
With nothing left to want, I think I'd be in hell.
This cuts against the ideas most people have about art: If you publish a book, that's the book, the end. If you release a movie, please do not come back and change the movie, we liked the first movie you released, and that's what we wanted to watch. A painting is painted and then hung in a gallery and if the painter comes in every day to make little adjustments, the painting has become performance art, and maybe you need to calm down and leave your painting alone.
Poetry operates a little differently. A poem is typically published in a literary journal or magazine then published again/later in a poet's collection. For particularly successful poets, the poem may even be published still more times in anthologies and collected volumes. The industry anticipates that poems may be revised between those instances of publication. The first version of the poem exists, it remains. Readers can continue to enjoy the first version of the poem, if they prefer that version. But publishing multiple versions of a poem enables a poet (and their editors) to continue improving upon the work, moving nearer to the poem's intended effect. Personally, I love to see the evolution of a poem, to compare and contrast different versions.
I suspect anyone involved in theater will understand. Theater changes and shifts. Each performance is slightly different, slightly unexpected, slightly re-framed or reconsidered. Because theater happens live on stage again and again, night after night, across any number of productions with different actors, directors, costume designers, choreographers, there is no one "version" of the play or the musical that is "the" version of the play or the musical. Even when a play or musical is filmed, when one particular performance by one particular production becomes inextricable from the collective understanding of the work (e.g. the May 1989 filmed production of the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods), the existence of that "captured" work does not prevent future adaptations, interpretations, or performances from also "being" the same work of art. If you attend your local high school's production of Into the Woods, you can say you've seen Into the Woods, even if you missed out on Joanna Gleason's definitive performance in 1989.
Poetry can be performed, and in that way, it sometimes shares much in common with theater. Many poets write specifically toward the idea of performance, and many will read their poems differently every time they stand on a stage.
But when non-poets express confusion about my revision process, they aren't reacting to the idea of performance adjustments. We intuitively understand that no two live performances will ever match exactly, and we'd never expect a performer to stop performing simply because they already performed something once (though, certainly, that happens, particularly in performance art).
When non-poets are taken aback by my ideas of post-publication revision, they are reacting to my lack of satisfaction with a published product.
"That's already published. Isn't it 'done'? Aren't you finished with it now?"
For poets who relate to the Voigt quote, the idea of "done" is antithetical to our conception of the artistic process. If I find a way that a poem can be improved, why wouldn't I work to implement that improvement? Why wouldn't I want my poem to be better? I am not here to finish writing poems, to be "done," to stand on a mountain of my writing and feel satisfied or complete and never write again. I am here to play, to explore, to experiment, to protect my motivating dissatisfaction from the lie of "accomplishment."
With nothing left to want, I think I'd be in hell.
A Brief Tangent Against Artificial Language Generation
I do not want to push a button and produce an art. What would be the point?
Imagine being given a receipt that reads, "You have played one game of kickball," and then being told that the receipt is either equivalent to or better than actually kicking a ball with your whole, real foot.
This is how I feel whenever someone suggests that AI can be used for generating "artwork."
Because so many people have decided that the point of making art is the product and not the process, they have failed to realize that the person most changed by the art is the person who took the time to make it, not the person who receives it.
Something happens to us when we make decision after decision in pursuit of a goal. We experience agency. We experience surprise. We manage to do something, to think something, to say something. We create not only the art but our ability to care about the art. We build a house of concern and devotion and interest and we live inside of it, where what we mean matters.
Nothing feels better than uncovering our own abilities as we use them.
To outsource your own communications to an artificial intelligence is to deem yourself unnecessary, redundant. You reduce yourself to a third-party assistant, play-acting at communication while you actually enable AI to talk to itself through you and the people around you, ferrying information back and forth from AI to AI without substantive, conscious, human involvement. On the backs of stolen artwork, you poison the collective well of human knowledge, taking a backseat in your artificially-propelled life—all to "save" "time"?
For what, exactly, are you saving your time?
But! I am not using AI to write this, and I do not want to get too far off track! So, back to poetry!
Imagine being given a receipt that reads, "You have played one game of kickball," and then being told that the receipt is either equivalent to or better than actually kicking a ball with your whole, real foot.
This is how I feel whenever someone suggests that AI can be used for generating "artwork."
Because so many people have decided that the point of making art is the product and not the process, they have failed to realize that the person most changed by the art is the person who took the time to make it, not the person who receives it.
Something happens to us when we make decision after decision in pursuit of a goal. We experience agency. We experience surprise. We manage to do something, to think something, to say something. We create not only the art but our ability to care about the art. We build a house of concern and devotion and interest and we live inside of it, where what we mean matters.
Nothing feels better than uncovering our own abilities as we use them.
To outsource your own communications to an artificial intelligence is to deem yourself unnecessary, redundant. You reduce yourself to a third-party assistant, play-acting at communication while you actually enable AI to talk to itself through you and the people around you, ferrying information back and forth from AI to AI without substantive, conscious, human involvement. On the backs of stolen artwork, you poison the collective well of human knowledge, taking a backseat in your artificially-propelled life—all to "save" "time"?
For what, exactly, are you saving your time?
But! I am not using AI to write this, and I do not want to get too far off track! So, back to poetry!
How Revision Works
To the original question: what, mechanically, is being changed as poems are revised?
Sometimes, the fundamental meaning of a poem can change. The poet's perspective on a topic can change. I might decide that an entire poem no longer interests me except for one line, and that line can be the seed for an entirely different poem!
But that seems fairly intuitive, right? If you're writing about something different, then you're writing about something different. That level of change wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
The type of revision that surprises non-poets—the type that most clicks my brain into high gear—is when the content of a poem, the general communication, remains static, but the language employed toward that communication changes.
I'll give a few examples—though far from a comprehensive list!
Word choice. I recently changed a line of poetry from "and back then even professors collapsed us" to "and back then even professors abridged us," because the word "collapsed" didn't really fit with the context of the line, and "abridged" reinforces the poem's academic setting while better communicating the idea of being truncated. Different words are associated with different things, even if they generally mean something similar. "Ascend" and "surmount" have different connotations. "Instruction," "direction," "command," "advice," "guidance," "requirement"—these words are not perfectly interchangeable. They carry baggage with them.
Shape & Structure. The order in which we receive information alters our understanding of that information. Sometimes, revision re-orders information to create a different experience of that information. We also experience a poem differently if it is written all in one stanza, or in couplets, or in field composition (where the words are scattered across the page, away from the left-hand margin). The shape of a poem can change radically in revision, even if the words themselves stay the same!
Sound & Cadence. Do I want to sound conversational ("I'm always wearing blue") or lyrical ("I tend to live my life in blue")? Do I want soft sounds ("ending the science of supple sayings") or hard sounds ("tracking the chicken's craven cackling")? Do I want slow, round language ("Around the orchard against the open wall") or fast, closed language ("Quick-cooked crumbs can kick it!")? The sounds of the words in the poem are like musical notes in a song—they influence how the poem "feels" to read or hear.
POV & Tense. I wrote a poem in third-person past tense ("She ran. She hopped the fence."). Then, I revised it into first-person present tense ("I run. I hop the fence."). Then, I revised it into a list of gerunds ("Running. Hopping the fence."). And each draft had merits, but the point-of-view and verb tense impacted the reader's experience. Right now, I'm sticking with the gerunds, because I want the poem to sound methodical, list-like, obsessive.
Line breaks. When writing lineated poems, poets have to decide where to break sentences into lines! Each choice will result in something different:
Sometimes, the fundamental meaning of a poem can change. The poet's perspective on a topic can change. I might decide that an entire poem no longer interests me except for one line, and that line can be the seed for an entirely different poem!
But that seems fairly intuitive, right? If you're writing about something different, then you're writing about something different. That level of change wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
The type of revision that surprises non-poets—the type that most clicks my brain into high gear—is when the content of a poem, the general communication, remains static, but the language employed toward that communication changes.
I'll give a few examples—though far from a comprehensive list!
Word choice. I recently changed a line of poetry from "and back then even professors collapsed us" to "and back then even professors abridged us," because the word "collapsed" didn't really fit with the context of the line, and "abridged" reinforces the poem's academic setting while better communicating the idea of being truncated. Different words are associated with different things, even if they generally mean something similar. "Ascend" and "surmount" have different connotations. "Instruction," "direction," "command," "advice," "guidance," "requirement"—these words are not perfectly interchangeable. They carry baggage with them.
Shape & Structure. The order in which we receive information alters our understanding of that information. Sometimes, revision re-orders information to create a different experience of that information. We also experience a poem differently if it is written all in one stanza, or in couplets, or in field composition (where the words are scattered across the page, away from the left-hand margin). The shape of a poem can change radically in revision, even if the words themselves stay the same!
Sound & Cadence. Do I want to sound conversational ("I'm always wearing blue") or lyrical ("I tend to live my life in blue")? Do I want soft sounds ("ending the science of supple sayings") or hard sounds ("tracking the chicken's craven cackling")? Do I want slow, round language ("Around the orchard against the open wall") or fast, closed language ("Quick-cooked crumbs can kick it!")? The sounds of the words in the poem are like musical notes in a song—they influence how the poem "feels" to read or hear.
POV & Tense. I wrote a poem in third-person past tense ("She ran. She hopped the fence."). Then, I revised it into first-person present tense ("I run. I hop the fence."). Then, I revised it into a list of gerunds ("Running. Hopping the fence."). And each draft had merits, but the point-of-view and verb tense impacted the reader's experience. Right now, I'm sticking with the gerunds, because I want the poem to sound methodical, list-like, obsessive.
Line breaks. When writing lineated poems, poets have to decide where to break sentences into lines! Each choice will result in something different:
| After wild boar boudin | After wild boar boudin | After wild boar boudin | After wild boar boudin |
So? Based on what I want to happen in my poem, which one will work better toward my desired end? Which one produces the energy I need? The pauses? The surprises? Which one will best welcome a reader into my poem? Which line break emphasizes "wild," or "after," or "boudin"? And which word do I want to emphasize?
Punctuation. What if I don't use commas? What if I don't use any punctuation marks at all? What if I use em dashes instead of other punctuation marks? What if I split up phrases and lines with slashes? What if I put everything in quotation marks? Every choice affects the outcome.
Articles & Pronouns. Is this "a shirt" or "the shirt" or "that shirt" or "their shirt" or "some shirt"? How do these function words imbue "shirt" with different levels of importance?
Considering all these facets of language (and many more) simultaneously? Well.
To return to to the subject of musicals, 🎶"You could drive a person craaazyyyy...."🎶
You could also have a damned good time, making all these decisions, seeing all these little tweaks accumulate into something that you have considered from every possible angle! For me, all these considerations help me isolate and reckon with my wayward, erratic thoughts.
And isn't that important? To examine what and how we think?
When to Stop
All of that said—yes, of course, at some point, you have to arrive somewhere. After putting all this thought into designing a poem's impact, you should allow that poem to impact someone, then move on to a new poem, a new project.
In their video "7 Deadly Art Sins," CJ the X said, "To complete and release or perform a piece is an essential part of the creative process. And if you're not doing it, you have not experienced the full cycle, you have not done the 'artist thing' yet. You're not 'perfecting your craft,' you're shielding yourself from vulnerability. [...] Uncompleted passion projects function like blockage in your creative system. While you're still enamored and honeymooning with this big special idea that's so important to you and you're always talking about but you never got around to finishing, you've cut off the pathway for new ideas to form within you. Until you release that blockage, you're not going to have as many new ideas."
How, then, to reconcile this—its incontrovertible truth—with Voigt? "It's all a draft until you die"?
We reconcile it by realizing that Voigt is not advocating against publication, and CJ the X is not advocating against post-publication revision.
Both call for openness to new ideas. Both call for flexibility in the creative process.
If you allow yourself to remain stuck working on one thing and never bring it to some conclusion, you are not progressing as an artist.
If you allow your work to remain stuck in one form and never explore its other possibilities, you are not progressing as an artist.
Their point—or, at least, my point—is that we cannot be precious about an idea. We have to remain nimble, to pursue the best form for the art we are making, to be involved in those decisions, then put it out into the world, even before we may consider it "ready." We keep working, keep writing, keep revising, keep sharing. We have to care. We have to consider.
Publication is a destination, not an end to the art.
Art only ends when we abandon ourselves and our humanity and the value of what we think.
So—you know—don't DO that!
Okay?
Okay.
In their video "7 Deadly Art Sins," CJ the X said, "To complete and release or perform a piece is an essential part of the creative process. And if you're not doing it, you have not experienced the full cycle, you have not done the 'artist thing' yet. You're not 'perfecting your craft,' you're shielding yourself from vulnerability. [...] Uncompleted passion projects function like blockage in your creative system. While you're still enamored and honeymooning with this big special idea that's so important to you and you're always talking about but you never got around to finishing, you've cut off the pathway for new ideas to form within you. Until you release that blockage, you're not going to have as many new ideas."
How, then, to reconcile this—its incontrovertible truth—with Voigt? "It's all a draft until you die"?
We reconcile it by realizing that Voigt is not advocating against publication, and CJ the X is not advocating against post-publication revision.
Both call for openness to new ideas. Both call for flexibility in the creative process.
If you allow yourself to remain stuck working on one thing and never bring it to some conclusion, you are not progressing as an artist.
If you allow your work to remain stuck in one form and never explore its other possibilities, you are not progressing as an artist.
Their point—or, at least, my point—is that we cannot be precious about an idea. We have to remain nimble, to pursue the best form for the art we are making, to be involved in those decisions, then put it out into the world, even before we may consider it "ready." We keep working, keep writing, keep revising, keep sharing. We have to care. We have to consider.
Publication is a destination, not an end to the art.
Art only ends when we abandon ourselves and our humanity and the value of what we think.
So—you know—don't DO that!
Okay?
Okay.
RSS Feed
