Revisions and Decisions

Finding the First Draft of My Poem Small Kindnesses

I’ve been having a lot of conversation with folks about revision. And that makes sense––writers revise! And there’s an ongoing concern of what to leave on the page and what to take out. Or how to take what you’ve said one step closer to what you meant to say. And so I’ve been thinking about how I revise which also means thinking about how and where I begin.

I thought, in the name of reflecting on this bigger question about revision, I‘d have us look at a draft of one of my poems I found in a filing box this past month where it has been sitting for some years. It’s the first draft of the poem, Small Kindnesses,” which I wrote in 2017.

Let’s take a look together, and then I will point out the changes I made before the final draft.

Can I say I just love the torn edge of the notebook paper? Probably the art student/stationary geek in me, but I love to see that. Here is how that section reads in the final poem:

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

So, first of all, I can see that I started out in a very similar way, making minor changes in style and wording. For example, I changed, “people will pull in their legs so as not to trip you,” to, “people pull in their legs to let you by.” Less awkward, which is certainly one of the main things I look for on a first pass at editing.

In the next bit, the part about people saying “bless you” when someone sneezes, I notice that the reference to death is absent. Instead, it says “in public,” another unnecessary phrase. I don’t remember how I edited that part, but I know I tend to go back and look for the shadow that is underneath whatever I’m writing about. In this case, the phrase bless you carried the shadow of the plague, and so I put that in. On a side note, I wrote this before the Covid 19 pandemic and so that reference was not a nod to the pandemic we lived through soon after.

I changed “Mostly we don’t want to hurt each other,” to “Mostly we don’t want to harm each other.” Not sure why, but I suppose hurt has a more physical connotation and harm a more general one. At least in my thinking. And maybe it’s also a little more difficult to embrace. Sure–––we don’t want to hurt each other physically. But could it be true that for the most part, we don’t want to cause harm? The world is––and was then––divided enough to make this a place I needed to pause.

Then I see some adding of what I refer to as texture: I added lemons and the kind of soup the waitress was serving and described the car that stopped. Someone later mentioned to me that the poem is full of Americana: a diner, a red pickup, clam chowder. And though that wasn’t intentional, it’s true, and I like that about the poem. It’s often the accidents we feel most pleased with because we had nothing much to do with them! At least not consciously.

Did I mention the time between the first and final draft was a couple of hours? I should mention that because often drafts are spread out over years. This was not that kind of process. I’m almost embarrassed to say I posted the poem on social media when I wrote it as a message to my friends–––and then I kept editing the post!!! First and last time I wrote a poem that way, but there you have it. It was in better shape than this draft when I posted it. The stuff about gravity and God was already out, and the simplified version was in place. I remember handing it to my husband, Armando, to read and he said he liked it but wasn’t sure about the hat bit at the end. I said, “I know what you mean,” but kept it anyways.

We have so little of each other, now. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

In any given life, so much can benefit from revision. We revise where we live, who we spend time with, what we do with our time. Sometimes all of the above. And on the page, as in life, we might benefit from reconsidering what we value and how to be as true to ourselves as we can be, even when that truth is a little quirkily, at the edge of sentimental, or flat-out strange. That’s the great adventure after all: being our fullest selves in the midst of all the other voices and pressures we face. And every time we sit down to write we have another opportunity to do just that.

I hope this was a fun walk through the park of the poem and my process of rewriting it. Let me know if you‘d like to know more about how I revise––– or anything else you might like to hear about my writing process. I had fun reminiscing. Wishing you writing that brings you the news of your deeper life and helps hold you true to it.

Til next time!

Danusha

And as always, if you’d like to know more about upcoming classes, go to www.danushalameris.com