The Best American Poetry features “Advice on Burning Manuscripts” from Gaylord Brewer’s BEFORE THE STORM TAKES IT AWAY

Part 2: Advice on Revision and the Pleasure of Burning Manuscripts with Gaylord Brewer [by Nin Andrews]

In my last post, I talked about Zoom classes, about advice (or lack thereof) that I have offered to MFA students. I decided to add a part 2  because I avoided the topic of revision. It’s my least favorite subject. Of course, students always ask if I revise and how and  . . .

I wish I didn’t have to revise. I am unspeakably envious of poets like Frank O’Hara, who was famous for not revising. Of A. R. Ammons [pictured, left] who could write a poem like “City Limits” in one sitting. Of Max Jacob who composed  in a notebook while walking through Paris and wrote:  “The ideas I found in this way seemed sacred to me and I didn’t change a comma. I believe that prose which comes directly from meditation is a prose which has the form of the brain and which it is forbidden to touch.” (From an interview with John Ashbery in the Paris Review)

Alas.  I revise and revise up to the last minute before a poem or book is published, and then I keep on revising. As to advice?