I Have a Cookie

I have a cookie.
It is chocolate chip.
I wish it weren’t.
I’d rather it a mudpie,
or tree bark.
Oatmeal raisin does me.
I have a cookie.
It’s not one of those.


**

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

While Miz Q is loafing, flipping through the seed catalogs and dreaming beautiful gardens, you get the opportunity to

Revise

(Yes. You, too, missy.)
Take some time, and really look at what you’ve written.

Suggestion:
Revise a poem from earlier this month. (or last month, or the month before. one that has had a chance to cool and get a little dust on it)

Treat it like a stranger

Write it out as if it were prose, but with no caps or punctuation. Just a long string of words.

Don’t read it, look at it. Look for repeated words (that you didn’t intend). Is it article-heavy, piled with prepositions and/or conjunctions?

Look at the individual words. Are there any massy concept bags that sound pretty but don’t mean anything?

What can you cut? What can you replace with a fresher word or a word that fits better or one that improves the sound?

Try different line lengths. Go against your habit. Play around with several arbitrary lengths before you look at end words and enjambments. When you get to the breaks, make certain those work for you.
Do the same with stanza breaks. Try imposing couplets, three-line stanzas, quatrains.

If you get tired, or bored before you put the poem back together, make an appointment with it. Set it to show up on your calendar in three or so weeks. Finish it then.

Go eat a cookie. Tell us how good the cookie was.