Revision, pt. I

Grab a cup of coffee, a Palomino Blackwing (made in my hometown!), and the Handbook. "Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control."

As I sit down to simultaneously detail my (heretofore non-existent) revision process and engage in the process itself—why do I do this to myself?—I realize that I don’t really know where to start.

The problem of any of my projects. Pre-start paralysis.

Many thanks to my friends Cindy and Garrett for their kingly gift of an entire box of these beauties. Made in Stockton, CA! Never crack open a book without one.

Okay. I said I would be “testing” Mary Oliver’s advice and ideas from A Poetry Handbook, and the only way I know how to do that is to annotate. Marginalia is my drug of choice; if I could somehow turn all my annotating into tattoos, I’d be the new Illustrated Man. My habit and practice is almost entirely refined and individualized from years of teaching high school students how to eat their books the way William Blake did. If you aren’t writing on what you’re reading, you aren’t reading.

Some highlights from this (second? third?) reading of “Revision”: