Eileen R. Tabios is a poet working in multiple genres and in-between. She also loves books by writing, reading, publishing, critiquing, romancing and advocating for them. This blog will feature her bibliophilic activities with posts on current book engagements and links to her books and projects related to books.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

REV VERSE and A CUBIST WAY TO EDIT

Speaking of the MDR Poetry Generator, I've been developing the first book-length collection to come out of it and discovered a new way to edit due to the project's cubist approach.  While I'd discussed "abstract language" in a prior post about the Generator, I'd not specified its cubist characteristic ... which is a long-held interest that shows up partly in how my early prose poems presented paragraphs that could be re-ordered from their publication order and still create effective poems.  

So, the working title for this manuscript is REV VERSE, because of its various reversals, that is also offering me a new way to edit poems.  That is, to make sure each line is strong, I reverse the order of the lines within a poem and the fresh perspective allows me to test each line anew from when I'd written them.

If the MDR Poetry Generator works, those "reversed" poems are also effective.  Still in the midst of it but I can share that the first reversed poem has been accepted for publication.  So, there must be something there.  Why not?  Perhaps to mature in poetry is to identify, too, when to ... reverse. 

As in, perhaps making the Weeping Woman smile ...




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