I’m starting something with this post that I want to continue with most if not all of my work: I’m posting the rough draft and will post all revised versions and the eventual final draft. I’ve never done revision in such a way that I kept my drafts. I’ve always simply revised one document until I was satisfied. I think, for myself, it may be useful to track what works and I believe it would be even more interesting to hear from any of you what you think is or isn’t working in these drafts. I love having criticism to read; constructive criticism, that is. If you hate it, thats perfectly fine, just tell me why.
As for this piece itself, I am not a poet. I studied it some and read plenty of it while in college, but I am no natural poet. More than likely, any poems I post here will be prose poems. The breaks I put in are more for signaling the change of idea to idea than they are to build a particular rhythm, even though, sometimes, I try that as well. This idea came to me from reading Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Flag.” If you’d like to read his poem, you can read it here. And so, here is the first rough, and actually unfinished, draft of my prose poem.
Neruda’s Flag
Out of soil
you toiled upward
kneeling out of roots
to stand and face the sun.
You spread and swayed
and grew with wind.
You acted upon the world
then it acted upon you.
Pulled and kneaded,
worked with hands,
you relented to purpose
far from that wild birth.
Your only symbol was yourself,
your only measure,
your height.
But with dyes from other lands
plans were made to change you,
to darken you to meaning.
You were filled and laid
among others, cut to size
and shape, pulled again
by hands.
polysyndeton 