Confessions of a Busy Soul

Hi everyone. Hope you had a great week. Here we are again, poetry Friday- Revision and Edit Note Edition. Last week I posted the original version of my poem, “History“. I spent the past week updating it to what I like to think is a much better version and as good as I can make it at this point. There were a lot of repetitive words like “that”, “when”, “and”,  as well as unnecessary words such as, “thinking of days before”, “simply forgotten”,”you are the historic”. To write great poetry, the useless words need to be cut out. Every word should have some importance to the imagery of the poem. “Simply forgotten” and “you are the historic” were much too obvious statements and hit the reader over the head with the message of the poem, which really is just bad poetry. It is implied throughout the poem the narrator is having difficulty writing about the emotions. Those emotions I had in my mind while I wrote it directly relates to a bad break up. At the end of the poem, ‘the historic’ is never recorded, so telling the reader they are ‘simply forgotten’ is redundant.

The next editing I did was to remove some confusing lines, such as, “I need a drink so I drown myself in water…”. These lines did not make sense upon review because during this part of the poem the narrator is expressing though much time passes they are still unable to write their feelings down. Though ‘drinking until you drown’ would take some time I didn’t feel I could portray this clear enough to keep it in the poem. So I deleted it. 

I don’t want to dissect this poem so much that I take the enjoyment of reading the new and improved version away from you, the reader. With that, I give the 2014 version of “History”. Please read, enjoy and feel free to leave me comments on how you like the new version. 

As always… thank you for reading and for sharing. Happy Friday! 

❤ Melissa

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History

With the last breath of day
the fall of night,
I write history.
Falling into poetic release,
I am the historian.

My weakness for solitude
prevails in the night air
as I turn to liquid ink.
Succumbing to passage of unconscious thought
hoping upon revival
answers will be inked.
Though I walk this endless trail,
I am still lost in liquid ink.
Though a million years pass,
I am still lost in liquid ink.
Knowing I possess the immortality
dripping from my finger-tips,
history written.
I am the historian knowing no history
you, the historic,
never recorded.
History.