How do you know when a poem is finished?
You don’t. The reason Paul Valéry’s remark that a poem is never finished, only abandoned, is quoted so often is that it is true. But it’s a little complicated. I tend to believe that you can always make a poem better… though, on the other hand, you can also over-revise a poem, making it feel less natural. Then you have to find your way back to the original impulse, or go back to an earlier version and work with that. Even in those cases, though, I have usually learned something in the process, and there is almost always something in the later version (the one I’m abandoning) that I want to import into the earlier version I’m returning to. One hopes that it’s possible to develop an instinct about when to stop working on a poem— like knowing when to take a child’s finger-painting away while it is still fresh and before it becomes a muddy mess. But your poet friends can also help with that.
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