Why would someone want to go back to one's poem and mess it up? - you might think. Well, my answer to that would be - Poetry is an art form and with the development of the artist's abilities, he becomes more aware and wise while creating. So, it is his innate desire to achieve some sort of perfection that inspires him to returns to his works; to examine them with the eye of a critic and a creator and make necessary changes to further his brilliance. You don't invent a great recipe in a single day, nor do you create a great poem in a single take.
Editing poetry can be a challenge at first. But like anything done repeatedly, it becomes a lot less tedious and can become a very enjoyable process.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Editing is a sort of experiment and every poet has his own way of editing. So, there is no step by step rule that I can provide for editing your poems. However, these points can be very useful if kept in mind while editing.
⚫You might want to keep the first draft when you start editing in case you don't like the edited version.
⚫Discard unnecessary words and/or add words for more clarity, depth, taste and overall beauty of the recipe.
⚫Find synonyms for better word selection.
⚫Change the format, alignment or even the font.
⚫Do not ignore punctuation, especially in the middle of a sentence. You can use line breaks, UPPERCASE LETTERS, space as a replacement for comma, full stop or semicolon.
⚫Read aloud and see if the poem flows naturally. Alliteration, consonance and assonance or rhymes or any poetic tool should not feel forced.
