Background Notes — Me, Stripped Down Ugly
Sending a poem through a condenser can be an excruciating process. The art of writing a poem is getting the words right, whether for rhyme or to fit meter or for a sestina’s teleutons, or to free the freest formed poem from excess weight. If a poem had the right words after the poet has already worked it through dozens of drafts, then how can a single word be eliminated, or how can any carefully selected adjective be converted to verb?
Yesterday I worked through multiple drafts before being satisfied enough to post one of my longest recent poems — Me, Ugly — as my first response to a WordPress Daily Post prompt at Daily Prompt: Shape Up or Ship Out. Then nipping right at that prompt’s heels comes the Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge: Papa Says Get Economical. Now I do realize that the weekly writing challenge was not meant as a critique aimed specifically at my response to the preceding daily prompt. But this was an irresistible challenge.
heptahedral 