The Poem That Almost Got Cut, or How to Share Your Life with Uncertainty
Many years ago, when dew still clung to the field (I think we’re talking around 1978), my first book of poems had won a prize and was entering the publication process, when I got a call from one of the editors of the press. She was, as editors can be, jealous of her prerogatives and more than a little imperious. She had called (this was before email, back that far) to inform me that there was one poem that “had to go.” It was “baroque to the point of being rococo,” she said, or some such. (Amazing how we remember scathing remarks for decades.) Back then, her tone of authority cowed me, and besides, anything uncomplimentary is easily mistaken for truth. I agreed to trash the poem.
Something like the next day I got a call from the well-known poet and critic who had been a judge for the prize. He was a poetry editor in those days, and said he wanted an unpublished poem from the collection to publish before the book came out. There were plenty of those! But guess which poem he chose. So, yes, I put the poem back in the book, its tarnish removed, its original gleam restored.
Is there a moral to this story? Stretching a point, maybe two, which are alternates, since they tend to contradict one another, like most truths: 1) The poem people hate fervently will usually be the poem others admire most, and therefore may contain something of value, since it gets through the thick hide of a general indifference. 2) Nobody can decide what poems you should keep or throw away—except you. When choosing an authority, it is best to fall into your own hands. But can you be sure you’re right? Here’s the end of W.S. Merwin’s poem “Berryman,” in which B. is giving the young poet advice: “you can’t you can never be sure / you die without knowing / whether anything you wrote was any good / if you have to be sure don’t write.”
