Posts and Edits

I post poems on this blog as they come to me.

Generally speaking, a poem comes to me  at night, or is in my head as I wake up, and I post it, if at all, as soon as may be after waking. Inevitably, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Kubla Khan, there is a feeling that there is something missing from the recollected version, or the dream version has to be re-crafted to give body to what is recalled as vague bits and pieces. Over time, the poem is often improved.

If you were to view the papers of, for example, W B Yeats, you would see how poems are re-shaped with edits over a period of time. Edited by hand, the changes are visible in manuscript. Since I post my new creations directly here, and edit on the fly, my edits are, in fact, invisible, except when, occasionally, I keep a copy on my home computer.

I post these thoughts today having just edited the poem I posted yesterday: Abandoned by the Dead.