Weeding My Poetic Garden

     Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of working Kathleen Merz, Managing Editor at Eerdmans and Jodell Sadler to offer a webinar through Kidlit College on creating reading that hooks readers on the first page and pulls them along to the last page with Kidlit College. It was a fantastic experience that has inspired the topic for today's blog--poetic weed.  It's a term I coined for applying the fundamentals of editing poetry to revising and tightening writing of any genre. All me to demonstrate one element of the poetic weed to get you started:

Here's my poem for today:

(27 of 30)

Growth Spurt

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"

she asks from the comfort of the backseat of our minivan

Is it going from learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"

to changing them to say, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"

two days after he died?

Or is it learning about the sacrifices of lent while sliding your chicken off your

plate onto the restaurant floor,

then announcing, "I gave the chicken up for lent."

Maybe it's raising your hand at children's church

when the minister asks, "What is heaven like?" 

and saying, "It's where you go and get a new body and never feel any pain anymore"

But what I tell you is that it's when

you're body craves all the nutrients you need and 

allows you to grow in one big overnight push

Yet I can't help but think that there's so much 

more than two rows of seats between me

and the little girl I can still see in the

rear view mirror

Pull All the Prepositions

Here, we have a narrative "poem" about a girl growing up too fast in a writing style that is more prose than poetry and even at that it's more told than shown, so the first step of a poetic week is to go back through and see if there are any words that are not essential to the manuscript. The best way to get started is to look at conjunctions, articles, prepositions, adverbs, and adjectives and see if perhaps you can't winnow down the language.

But remember this rule: Only remove words if by their removal you make the writing more active, dramatic,and organic. If removing the word makes it awkward or stiff, you want to leave the word where it is. 

  Let's give it a try:

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"

she asks from her car seat perch

Is it learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"

and converting them to, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"

two days after he died?

Or learning about lent while sliding your 

chicken onto the restaurant floor,

then announcing, "I gave it up for lent."

Maybe it's responding, "What is heaven like?" 

with "It's where you go and get a new pain-free body"

But what I say is, "Your body stories all the good food

you eat, then zoom you grow double quick."

Yet, I'm thinking,

there's so much more than two rows of seats 

between me

and the little girl 

I can still see in the

rear view mirror

The events and images are a lot tighter and clearer now, the pace smoother.

But this is only one step of a poetic weed and it's important to remember that writing is like gardening. You don't just pull one batch of weeds and walk away until harvest time. You plant, you water, you fertilize, then you weed, and weed, and weed, then after you've dealt with the birds and the bugs and little bare footed invaders, you harvest what could be a beautiful tomato of a poem or it could be a lovely red fruit a piece that looks good but tastes/reads like dirt.

Give Strength to Your Tomatoes 

Or at least the opening and closing of each line.  Just as we put our tomatoes in a cages to give them something to grow on, the scaffolding of a poem can be your opening and closing words for each line.

A poetic weed also asks you to look at where you end and begin your lines. You should go for strength, clarity, and narrative gap here. You want strong, concrete words that can open up a sense of suspense for what's coming in the next line.

Let's put up our tomato towers in the poem I'm working on:

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"
she asks from her car seat perch
Learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"?
Converting them to, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"
two days after he died?
Or
Learning about lent while sliding
chicken onto the restaurant floor,
announcing, "I gave it up for lent."
Maybe
It's responding to "What is heaven like?"
with "It's where you go and get a new
pain-free body."
But
I tell you, "Your body stories all the good food
then zoom,
 you grow double quick."
Yet, I'm thinking,
there's so much more
 than two rows of seats
between me
and the little girl
I can still see in the
rear view mirror

We're getting closer one bloom at a time. I hope. Here, by turning the answer into separated questions, I was able to lead with "learning" and "converting" and remove "your" and "then" and I worked on the line breaks to set up the possibilities of the answers with "or," "maybe," and "but" they're not powerful words, but I'm hoping the single words work like the base in a fulcrum, balancing the ideas on either side.

I hope this gives you a little helpful advice.  I know that with this particular poem, I'm just getting started and I'm eager to keep going/growing!

How about you?

Weed away my friend!  You'll never know what may grow from it.