How do you know when a poem is finished?
It’s hard to say. Paul Valery said that “a poem is never finished, only abandoned,” so I guess the question is: at what point do I let myself abandon a poem so it can live on its own? Final lines/images tend to come quickly to me, whether they be a shift in a primary image or a conclusion of a thought. From there, I return the poem’s body to make sure the rest of it builds toward this ending—pruning redundancies and irrelevant lines to keep the piece moving forward. Once I feel like each line has earned its place, I put the poem down.
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