When is a poem finished?
When is a poem finished?
“It achieved its final form when I stopped making it worse.”
“I write a lot; most of what I write is discarded. I like the process of invention. After I have about six months of first drafts, I go back and read to see which ones are still exciting for me on the page. Only a tiny percentage of poems make it into a final manuscript. I don't know how I decide they are finished. Maybe I just know I am not smart enough to make them any better at that moment?”
“Perfect things in poetry do not seem strange, they seem inevitable.”
-Jorge Luis Borges (Harvard lecture series)
“You can’t find better words for the best words.”
-Glyn Maxwell (On Poetry)