World Class Poetry Blog

First Drafts: Hard Work In Dire Need Of Revision
25 November 2007, the poet @ 9:27 pm

The poetic process can be grueling. I found out that today is the anniversary of a historic event in the series of wars commonly called The Crusades. I thought it fitting to try to write a poem about it, but I didn’t want to write a simple, common poem. I wanted it to be an uncommon one. It can best be described, at least in its present form, as a neo-romantic epic. Think of The Rime of The Ancient Mariner without the strict meter and with the addition of off-beat internal rhymes. More prosaic, less rime, and a heavy reliance upon emotional zeal through the telling.

The event my poem commemorates is the Battle of Montgisard, which took place between the second and third crusades between King Baldwin IV, a leper, and Saladin, the famous (or infamous, depending on which side of the Holy Wars you fall on) Turkish-Kurdish Muslim warrior. In its present form, my newest poem operates in six movements. It would be right to call it a ballad. I spent all day working on it.

How long I spend on a poem has no bearing on how good that poem might be. I have poems that I’ve worked on for years and are still unfinished. I have others that I’ve sweated over for a mere hour or two and they are as finished as they’ll ever be. Some of my best poems I didn’t spend much time on at all; on the other hand, I have some poems that I thought I’d never work out and they shine. There’s no way to predict how a poem will end up once I start on it. I have to remind myself, I’ve only worked the first draft.

Much of the time was spent researching the details of the battle and the persons involved. I have the basic shell and outline of the poem and how I want it to be structurally. I am not satisfied with the actual poetry - the machinations within the art. I still have much work to do. I am looking forward to this one because I love ballads, particularly epic ballads, and that’s what I am trying to create, although one that does not follow a traditional model. That’s a risk, I know. But what is a poet if he can’t take risks?

First drafts are frightening because you never know where they’ll go, or even where they come from. If you’re like me, you just write, hoping to see where it leads. But when dealing with a historic event, there are considerations that are not required with other subjects. How true do you remain to the actual details of the event, for instance. When do you exercise license to fictionalize the events of the poem? That is the true work of poems like these, and because of that, first drafts are hard to come by.

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