Making an enemy?

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:

Early Fall

Cinder blocks stacked
by a metal shed door
leaning, beaded, broken in

a haze
of evaporated rain.

*   *  *

What do you think?

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