Reinvention Exercise

Hopefully, you've grasped by now the necessity of toiling over every word and line break; that writing good poetry takes passion and energy and it should be fun, yes, but it also takes some sweat and dedication.  Especially when we spend a great deal of time crafting our individual lines, though, it can be very easy to get tunnel vision.  That means we end up tinkering with a few syllables when the hard truth is that the poem might require something more radical.

One way to get around that and simultaneously develop a deeper sense for your own turns and rhythm is to basically rewrite your poem backwards, starting with your last line and ending with your first.  Then, tinker with the punctuation, grammar, and word choice to clear up any syntactical disasters that can result from something like this.  When you're done, put the two drafts side by side.  Which do you like better?

Incidentally, this doesn't just have to be a tool for radical revision; you can also use this as an invention exercise and produce a whole new piece, inspired by a certain line or imaginative leap you might not have otherwise made.

A still more difficult (but damn impressive) exercise is to write a poem that can be read (more or less) in either direction. The most famous example of this (which is probably familiar) is Read This Poem from the Bottom Up by Ruth Porritt.


Read This Poem from the Bottom Up
by Ruth Porritt

This simple cathedral of praise.
How you made, from the bottom up,
Is for you to remember
of Andromeda. What remains

Until you meet the ancient light
With your sight you can keep ascending
Its final transformation into space.
And uphold

The horizon's urge to sculpt the sky
Puts into relief
Your family's mountain land
Upon the rising air. In the distance

A windward falcon is open high and steady
Far above the tallest tree
Just beyond your height.
You see a young pine lifting its green spire

By raising your eyes
Out onto the roof deck.
You pass through sliding glass doors
And up to where the stairway ends.

To the top of the penultimate stanza
Past the second story,
But now you're going the other way,
Line by line, to the bottom of the page.

A force that usually pulls you down,
Of moving against the gravity of habit,
While trying not to notice the effort
And feel what it's like to climb stairs.