I hope not, but I am going to repost a poem here from the poem-a-day feature of the Academy of American poets. Reading it, I had an idea about what I would suggest were I an editor and this poem came to me. But poets are rarely open to suggestions as radical as mine. Editing others’ work as I see it is part of my belief that poets are all really working on one big quilt of words, and it’s important to be open to others thoughts about one’s particular needlework. Of course, it’s easier to be open to editing others’ work than to accept suggestions about one’s own.
In any case, here is the poem as written, followed by my suggestion.
Early Fall
Rain decays dawn—
everything in the yard
leaning, beaded, broken in.
A lucid dream
the weather
assembles; a pain particular
as light seeping
into an alley
narrowed by overgrowth.
To articulate what slips
the instant
speech moves
to apprehend it.
Cinder blocks stacked
by a metal shed door
totem-like
in haze
of evaporated rain.
Joseph Massey
My suggested edit: Continue reading “Making an enemy?”
Larry said it looked like kindergarten cappuccino. With this particular cappuccino, I made Kenji Alt-Lopez’ BLT, which includes bread sautéed in bacon fat, and thick, salted slices of tomato. Yum!