Editing Poetry: Style Editing

Proceed With Caution

Poetry is not just any text. It’s a distillation of human thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It’s the concentrated essence of humanity, poured out somehow into words. Because poetry is intense, condensed, and often rule-breaking by its very nature, we must edit poetry a little differently than we do prose.

A Quick Look at Prose Editing

There are as many ways to edit prose as there are editors, but my favorite method involves five types of editing, usually done in separate ‘runs’:

• Mechanical Editing: Spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.
• Continuity Editing: Does the narrative flow properly, without flubs or gaps?
• Style Editing: Does the piece adhere to the parameters of the style I’ve chosen?
• Content Editing: Does the content portray what I want the piece to convey? Is there extraneous content that doesn’t need to be there?
• Character Consistency Editing: Are there glaring inconsistencies with a character (or their actions) that detract from the authenticity of the character or don’t contribute to the overall narrative?

I’ll cover these in more detail in a future article on prose editing, but I list them here to make a quick point of comparison: Not all of these apply to poetry. The ones that probably do apply most often are Style Editing, Content Editing, and Mechanical Editing. This article will cover Style Editing and other articles will cover the other types of editing.

Style Editing for Poetry

Poetry doesn’t always adhere to rules. Some of the best poetry flows freely from a place of no rules at all. There are many types of poetry, though, that stick to certain rules of structure. If your goal is to create a particular style of poem (sonnet, haiku, sestina, limerick…), you’ll have to do some Style Editing to ensure that you’re conforming to your desired format. That may be obvious, but below I'll also share my take on some less-obvious style choices.

Here are just a few examples of some poetic styles that have specific structural rules:

• Haiku: a traditional Japanese style of poem of three lines totaling 17 syllables, the first line having 5, the second 7, and the third 5. Haiku tend to also contain a ‘cutting word’ and a seasonal or nature reference, but over the years, the definition of haiku has arguably expanded to include any poem of three lines, as long as each of them has the customary number of syllables.
• Sestina: a fixed-verse form of poetry containing six stanzas of six lines each, usually concluding with an additional three-line stanza. The words at the end of each line of the first stanza are reused as line endings in each of the following stanzas, but in a different, set order for each stanza. (If you got lost reading that, don’t feel bad; I got lost a few times while writing it.)
• Limerick: A (usually humorous) rhythmic poem of five lines, the first, second, and last of which have seven to ten syllables, with shorter third and fourth lines of five to seven syllables. Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with one another, and lines 3 and 4 rhyme with one another.

There are dozens (well, probably hundreds) of other styles, but as we can see by looking at just these few, it can be annoying to have to write out the rules for a particular form, let alone adhere to them while trying to create a thing of beauty.

Many would argue that restricting the creative process with such legalistic nonsense is a total buzz-kill, and that these rigid forms should be avoided at all costs. On some days, I'd agree with them!

Many others, though, would say that choosing a style of poetry that forces them to operate within a set of rules is just what they need to get their creative muscles toned up. It can be immensely rewarding to approach a poem as a puzzle that must be assembled according to specific rules and to overcome those challenges while creating something that is entirely your own.

But we’re here to talk about Style Editing, not the merits of the freewheelers vs. the structure-lovers…

The idea behind Style Editing is to go over your work at least once (but probably several times), checking to ensure that it fits within the style that you’re aiming for. If your chosen style is to have no style, you might simply be checking to make sure your poem didn't somehow take shape into something that sounds like a limerick or some other formally structured style of poetry. If your goal was to write a sestina, you will probably read through your work many times confirming that it doesn't break any of the rules for sestinas. These uses of Style Editing—as I said—are probably pretty obvious.

One of my favorite things to do, though, is to start with a recognizable style at the beginning of a piece and degrade or destroy that style along the way, finishing up with lines in a completely different style or with no style at all. This can be especially effective if the topic or content of the piece is tragic, or somehow lends itself to a 'breaking down' of its content as well as in its style.

Conversely, it can also be interesting to start a piece with free-flowing lines in no particular style, and have them coalesce into a more formal style by the end of the poem.

If you’re the kind of poet who just wants to throw all of those complicated, highfalutin styles into the rubbish bin and write as freely as birds fly, first I would remind you that birds only fly because they stick to certain rules of physics. Then I would also suggest that it can be a lot of fun to adopt styles simply to ruin them, and it can be just as enjoyable to employ styles here and there when you want your poem to drive home some kind of message and you feel that a particular style shift would help with that.

You make the rules; it's your writing. But if you decide that you're going to write within a certain style then at some point you'll want to edit with that style in mind. It's no fun to show someone the sestina you just wrote, only to have them point out that you forgot to reuse one of the words properly.

Can't I just edit while I write?

You can, but it’s a sure-fire way to miss things. Writing and editing use different thought processes. You really should do your writing separately from your editing, and always split your editing into different ‘runs’.

In other words, do your Style Editing separately from your Mechanical Editing and your Content Editing. Why? Because human brains work differently when they’re looking for errant commas and missed uppercase letters, when they’re looking for adherence to structural rules, and when they’re tossing synonyms around to find just the right word to convey a feeling or a thought.

Each type of editing deserves its own focused editing run. If you’re not sold on this, just try it a few times. It’s one of those things you won’t stop doing once you see how valuable it is.

Stick around for articles on Mechanical Editing and Content Editing for poetry in the not-too-distant future!

Thanks for reading! Now get back to writing!