Revise, revise, but when is too much?
June 25, 2009
In fact, we were both inspired by the same image we saw, one summer driving south out of the Adirondack Mountains. A field, a car, a barn.
I wrote the poem in a quick burst of notes crawling around in the field as Joshua searched for the best angle to capture the scene on film. (See the result at left.)
Joshua’s photograph hangs on my wall and has adorned at least one book (not yet mine). My poem was published in Blueline, a journal published at SUNY Potsdam.
Some time over the years, after its publication, I revised the poem, excising what I thought were superfluous lines that made too fine a point in trying to draw a parallel between the subject’s experience — a woman who ended her marriage abruptly — and the landscape we found. The lines removed are underlined below:
Fallow Field
The old car is there,
where she left it,
out by the old shed,
breeding rust–obscured
from the roadway by the rye grass
that grows up all around.
Long triangular tentacles
blowing and bending
in the hot breeze, as
sunlight filters in
through gathering clouds.
By now the grass has worked
up into the engine block.
The car--an old
Chevrolet or Buick?–
no matter, it’s what
is planted now,
in this fallow field,
awaiting bulldozers.
They call this grass
“poverty grain,” and there’s
no small comfort in the fact
that it’s as tolerant
of poor soils
as she was of the poor soils
of her marriage.
On the day she left,
she packed her whole life
into an old grip: clothing,
framed photographs
of the children, her parents,
the salt cellar she’d bought
on her honeymoon in Rome.
While packing, she’d given
pause that her whole life
had become so
portable, where once there’d
been permanence. And now,
she blows and bends
like this rye grass
on a midsummer afternoon,
so far from home,
so far from the old shed
of her former self.
Joshua’s objections are outlined in the following email:
SEA: Ok, I’ve read and re-read the two versions of Fallow Field and again I want to express my support for the earlier version. There are three changes I’m aware of, two lines in the body and the ending. I don’t feel the two lines alter the poem much but the ending! The ending Scott! It flowed before, it let you down easy, it tied it all up like the well written present that it was.
I agree with Joshua that the old ending tied it all up neatly — just a little too neatly for my taste. I think the newer ending, with its abruptness, speaks more to the experience of the woman in the poem, and is more true to life.
Things don’t always end neatly. In fact, I suggest that most things don’t. Life is full of messy, sudden changes, especially in relationships.
Below is how the revised version of the poem reads today. What do you think?
Fallow Field
The old car is there,
where she left it,
out by the old shed,
breeding rust–obscured
from the roadway by the rye grass
that grows up all around.
Long triangular tentacles
blowing and bending
in the hot breeze, as
sunlight filters in
through gathering clouds.
By now the grass has worked
up into the engine block.
The car
is planted now,
in this fallow field,
awaiting bulldozers.
They call this grass
“poverty grain,” and there’s
no small comfort in the fact
that it’s as tolerant
of poor soils
as she was of her marriage.
On the day she left,
she packed her whole life
into an old grip: clothing,
framed photographs
of the children, her parents,
the salt cellar she’d bought
on her honeymoon in Rome.
While packing, she’d given
pause that her whole life
had become so
portable, where once there’d
been permanence. And now,
she blows and bends–
rye grass on a midsummer afternoon.
##
December 4, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Great discussion Scott, and always a favorite of mine. When I saw the initial edits omitting the last five lines, i got concerned, I thought the result would be too austure, abrupt, and I felt it would be important to bring the grass back into the poem’s closure and was glad to see it there.
March 12, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Hi Scott, thanks for posting the link to this on my LatitudeDrifts blog. I enjoyed your description of writing this with the photographer — what you saw, and what he saw — and the subsequent revisions. (I am fascinated by writers’ processes.) And I love your third ending. The image of the grass holds so much — I’m glad you put it back.
November 20, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Thanks, Shelley. If you are interested in writers’ processes, you may be interested in this essay/lecture I gave at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, on the process of revision, called “Making Poems Better”: http://mysite.verizon.net/vze80fuu/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/making_poems_better.pdf
September 16, 2013 at 11:57 am
[…] The paperback book is 96 pages, including front and back matter, with a gorgeous cover photograph by my good friend Joshua Sheldon (see picture), which was taken at the same time and has the same origin of inspiration as the title poem. (You can read the poem and its story here: “Fallow Field.”) […]
October 23, 2013 at 9:01 am
[…] you can read the poem here or in my new book of poems, which you can purchase […]
May 8, 2014 at 1:35 pm
[…] they’ve never included any of mine – not even some of my better efforts, like “Naming” and “Fallow Field.” The latter was nominated for a Pushcart, but as the title poem of my collection published last […]