"Two other processes are helpful to me in making decisions about what to include and what to take out of a book of poems. One is the dramatic, read-everything-out-loud technique. Richard Hugo gives this advice to poets in The Triggering Town: 'Read your poem aloud many times. If you don't enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.' This is good advice for assembling a book of poems as well. Reading the poems aloud over and over and listening to the movement from end line to beginning line, from scene to scene and voice to voice, reveals the book's underlying dramatic structure and helps me to hear more clearly the sound patterns and explicit and inherent forms. At this stage, I often discover poems that I have not written yet."
--Maggie Anderson
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