The most interesting example of the potential pitfalls and controversies of revision of a published poem is Marianne Moore’s “Poetry.” Moore was notorious for editing poems that had already seen the printed page. This process has left readers and critics alike with the question, “Which is the real poem?” Presented here are the two most well-known versions of the poem. The first is from her Selected Poems, 1935 (and seen again in her Collected Poems, 1951):

“Poetry”

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
   all this fiddle.
  Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
   discovers in
  it after all, a place for the genuine.
   Hands that can grasp, eyes
   that can dilate, hair that can rise
     if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
   they are
  useful. When they become so derivative as to become
   unintelligible,
  the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
   do not admire what
   we cannot understand: the bat
     holding on upside down or in quest of something to
 
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
   wolf under
  a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
   that feels a flea, the base-
  ball fan, the statistician--
   nor is it valid
     to discriminate against “business documents and
 
school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make
   a distinction
 however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
   result is not poetry,
  nor till the poets among us can be
   “literalists of
   the imagination”--above
     insolence and triviality and can present
 
for inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,”
   shall we have
  it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
  the raw material of poetry in
   all its rawness and
   that which is on the other hand
     genuine, you are interested in poetry.

There is a lot to love about the long, winding paths which Moore follows in this piece. Yet from her 1967 book Complete Poems, it is clear that Moore was struggling for decades with how to present this poem:

“Poetry”

I, too, dislike it.
    Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
    it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Arguments abound as to which version is superior. Often, the poets who defended or lauded her earlier version are angered at her drastically condensed second version. There are questions as to whether the later version truly captures the tone of the earlier version. Other might say that the second version goes beyond “all this fiddle” which the earlier version claims to dislike. For further reading on some superb reviews of Moore’s poem, try these two links: http://www.slate.com/id/2221785/ (by Robert Pinsky); http://www.english.illinois.edu/Maps/poets/m_r/moore/poetry.htm (by Donald Hall and others).

Revision allows the poet time to step back from a piece and see, from the eyes of a stranger, which parts can be cut, and which parts need more room to breathe. Editing too little might make a piece seem sloppy, but too much editing might force the poem into a straight jacket. Even when a poem is “finished,” there is still the process of submission which gives magazine and book editors a chance to wrap their hands around a poem and decide what goes in and what goes out. Knowing how much a poem has to go through just to see the light of day gives one a greater appreciation for how valuable those strings of words truly are: with one flick of a pen, or one press of a button, those words could have been erased from all memory.

Click here to read “The Importance of Revision in Poetry – Part 1”

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Revision in Poetry – Part 1
2. Importance of Poetry
3. What is Poetry?