Version Therapy

One of the good things about blogs is that they not only give you a chance to look at things off the page as it were, but they also give you the opportunity to amend or edit the posts, the pieces that you post there.

Most posts, per se, I leave alone, perhaps correct a spelling mistake or restructure a phrase. Occasionally I will delete something I feel after looking at it later that is in questionable taste. But with poetry, the blog provides an ideal viewing platform, not necessarily the place to change but at least somewhere to provoke further thoughts about what you've done. There are quite a few poems first posted to a blog that have undergone severe rewriting before appearing in a later collection.

The poem below is as I posted it to my Series Magritte yesterday. I don't remember thinking about it after I posted it, but something must have been churning around in my subconscious because this morning I got up & rewrote it. I have now replaced the original on S.M., but am posting it here because it may give, for those of you who are interested, an inkling of my poetic processes.

# 91 The Delights of landscape

Each night
the hunter returns
recounting the
animals he has
shot, the trees
cut down to
remove all ground-
cover. Sometimes
the animal is eaten
or the head hung
in the trophy room.
The wood is set
aside & seasoned
for furniture, or
used to fuel the fire
in winter. He has
made a frame from
the best timber. It
rests, waiting to be
hung unfilled in
celebration the day
he comes home
empty-handed.