How do you know when a poem is finished?
I consider myself more a reviser than a writer. I don’t think a poem is ever finished. Maybe, during the revision process, the second, third, or thirteenth draft becomes a different poem altogether. But maybe, during those in-between drafts, you start to see the potential or the concept or the beginnings of a poem become your own. Somewhere in-between, you realize that a poem is finished because it is exactly in the order you want to say it, with the exact words you want to say it with. Sometimes, it requires another comma or two. But at some point, you get tired of reading your own work, and you abandon it, and it stops there. Sometimes you pick it up again. It really depends on where the poem wants to go. Just let the poem take you to where it wants to go.
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