How do you know when a poem is finished?
I know when it’s finished if I can read through it and I don’t feel an urge to change it. I’ll take it from its roughest, handwritten form, type it, revise for line-breaks and pay attention to rhythm and the way the sounds play. I don’t want any log-jambs of sound, a clashing of dental fricatives or anything. Then I mess around a bit with the way it looks on the page. I read it. Put it away, come back after giving it a little time to become unfamiliar so that I can see it without my ego. Then, if I feel like I can read it and witness it and just enjoy it without the cringing feeling that something’s just not right here, I feel fairly sure it’s done, or at least that I am done with it.
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