A Circle Is God Saying Yes: Strategies for Rethinking Revision

In this craft seminar, we’ll enlarge and complicate what we mean when we say “revision”. Revision isn’t just reworking language, it’s part of the poet’s practice. One should never be satisfied with the first gift: the language that arrives first. Poets should aspire to more surprising imagery and phrasing. During our conversation, we’ll put pressure on notions of attentiveness, notebooking, reading, the poetic line, sentence patterns, imagery, and language itself. How do we notice and internalize the things of the world? How can we be more attentive to our attentiveness? We’ll practice a few revision strategies during our time together and discuss the importance of wonder and bewilderment in a poet’s life.