How to Warm Up a Poem That’s Gone “Cold”
This article is for: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced—i.e. ALL of us!
How can you restart a poem that’s been abandoned?
Sooner or later, this is a problem we all face.
It isn’t always possible to complete a poem in one burst: we get stuck, we lose interest, or life takes over. Whatever the cause, some poems get pushed to one side, and left there—perhaps for years!
When this happens, the poem gets “old” and “cold.”
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What are “old, cold” poems?
An “old, cold” poem is one that you last drafted some time ago—long enough that you are no longer “inside” the heat and excitement of the poem.
The actual length of time since you worked on it isn’t very important—it could be 50 years, or it could be two days! What matters is that you’ve forgotten the emotions of it, maybe even the ideas; and going back to it and changing it seems akin to picking up a giant boulder.
This is in direct contrast to the fizz and bubble of first being “inside” a poem, when the ideas are flowing freely and you feel thrilled by what you’re creating.
With “Old, cold” poems, on the other hand, you feel very definitely “outside” the poem: you seem to be looking at it from a distance, almost as if you didn’t make it in the first place.
Now, if the poem is all done, then being “old and cold” is just fine. You don’t need to get back into it.
But when you know the poem still needs work, “old, cold” is a problem.
How can you get back into such a poem to redraft it, when you have no ideas for it, it barely even feels like your poem, and/or you just have no desire to rework it?
Fortunately, there is an answer:
You need to recapture that that buzz of joy and exploration about the poem that you had when you were previously working on it.
And while at first this seems impossible, actually there are a few tools that help enormously. If you’ve browsed through The Poetry Place, you may have met these methods before, but I’m going to show how they relate specifically to restarting “cold” poems.
Focused freewrites
(I give a full explanation of freewriting and how to do it, with examples, in this article.)
In a nutshell, freewriting means writing down any old thing that comes into your mind, as fast as you can, without thinking about structure, quality, planning, or anything like that.
You’re just capturing the flow of thoughts through your mind. At its best, it helps you find ideas and connections that you didn’t know you knew, because you’re writing without placing any blocks on your consciousness.
For this reason, many poets use freewriting as a way to find stimulating initial ideas, and it does work brilliantly for that. If you ever feel like writing but are stuck for inspiration, try doing a freewrite! I guarantee something will come up to spur your imagination.
What you may not know is that you can also use freewriting to develop an existing idea.
In this case, you try to keep the freewrite just a little more focused—circling around a topic you want to explore, rather than letting your mind go absolutely anywhere.
This can be a tricky balance—freewrites work because they’re free, but you’re trying to restrain this one! But it can be done. And once you get skilled at it (Hint: practice helps), you’ll find that focused freewriting is an amazing tool for getting back into an “old, cold” topic.
Simply drop the topic into your mind, start the Focused Freewrite, and watch yourself discover new thrills and dimensions that could be included in the next draft of the poem.
This is a great way to bring the heat and joy back into a poem.
Clustering
(Again, I have a detailed article about this topic, with examples.)
Clustering is a bit like freewriting, except that its freedom comes from the way you use the space of the page, rather than how you use language.
To start a cluster, write a subject you want to explore at the center of a blank page.
Look at the subject, and notice what thought comes into your mind. Whatever it is, write it down a little away from the center of the cluster, joining it to the center with an arrow (there are photos in the article).
Keep noticing what’s coming into your mind, and write the next idea down in line with the first one, and connect it up to the first idea with another arrow. Now you’re making a chain of ideas, that starts from the old idea, but is free to venture into new territory.
Keep doing this until the chain you’re on runs out of impetus. Then go back to the initial subject, and see what new thing comes into your mind this time. Use this to start another chain. Repeat this as many times as seems fruitful!
Clustering has many benefits, but a big one is helping you to make new connections between thoughts, that you could not have reached by thinking in sentences or lines.
So that makes clustering perfect for restarting “old, cold poems.”
Put something from the cold poem at the center, start the cluster, and watch new possibilities start to flow!
Paraphrasing
(Here is the full article on this tool.)
The basic idea of paraphrasing is straightforward. You simply write a prose summary of the ideas of your poem, ideally down the side of the poem.
Now, this by itself is valuable. If you make yourself directly state the ideas you’re conveying at each point in the poem, you may see issues such as:
Places where the ideas aren’t coming over clearly.
Times where you yourself don’t know what you’re saying!
Sections where the flow of ideas doesn’t make sense.
For these reasons, paraphrasing is good to use with any poems.
But there’s another aspect of paraphrasing that makes it especially useful for “old, cold” poems, which is:
As you paraphrase, you can also add in new ideas that come as you write.
I can’t overstate how beneficial I find this. Always, when I paraphrase a poem I feel distant from, I start to re-enter the ideas, and then to see how I could add to them or change them.
And because new ideas mean new excitement, that means I’m successfully back “into” the poem.
After you’ve found those new ideas, you can work on images to make them sound like poetry, not prose, and where they’re going to fit in the new draft.
Index Cards
(Here is the full article on this tool.)
Sometimes when you’ve opened up new possibilities for an “old, cold” poem, it’s still hard to see how to integrate those new ideas into the old draft.
Index cards can help.
Write out both the old draft and the new ideas, on index cards. Use one card per phrase (so you might have multiple cards for one line). And yes, this may take a while!
Then arrange the index cards on a large surface (I use a floor). Move them around, take some out, put others in—generally play with them! And see what happens.
This works because the index cards help you break up the monolith that was the old poem. They’re so easy to pick up and move about, and you can add or remove them—or put them back—as much as you want.
I very often use this as a stage that comes after paraphrasing, freewriting, and/or clustering.
Some general principles while you’re doing all this
1. Be flexible
What worked like a dream for one poem won’t necessarily cut it for another one! Always be prepared to try out a new approach if one doesn’t spark.
2. Use more than one method
These approaches all tackle the redrafting problem in different ways, so they may all give you something, and all be worth trying.
For myself, a typical approach is Paraphrase then Freewrite then Index Cards.
3. Trust your intuition
Let your hunches guide your choices—if you have a feeling that something new might work for this poem, do it!
For one particular poem I was redrafting, I had done a paraphrase, and was wondering what to do next. I was thinking about Index Cards, when suddenly I had the feeling that I should type up my paraphrase, which I’ve never done before. I did it, and it morphed into some excellent freewriting!
Using these approaches, I hope you’ll find that restarting a cold poem becomes much easier!
In fact I find it at least as exciting as starting a new poem, and I hope you will too.
Next Steps
Choose an old poem that you know isn’t finished, and that you want to work on.
First, read the poem a few times.
As you do so, look for the ideas that are in the poem—and, if you can remember them, the ones in your mind when you last worked on it. Jot these down in your notebook.
Then make a cluster.
Put the title of the poem at the center of a page, and make a cluster.
Start the first “arm” using one of the ideas you’ve jotted down. When that runs out, take another of the ideas and start a new arm.
As you start to get entirely new ideas, incorporate those into new or existing arms of the cluster too.
Move to a freewrite.
Once you feel filled with ideas, start a freewrite. Let your cluster ideas inform what you write, but also let yourself range freely into new territory.
Add some of your new ideas to the old draft.
Now you’re ready to warm up that old, cold poem! Rub some life back into it by adding the best or most fitting of your new ideas—or even rewrite the thing from scratch, if you feel your new ideas far surpass the previous ones!
If you have trouble doing this, put all the ideas—old and new—onto index cards.
Then arrange, rearrange, and select/reject cards to make a new draft that way.
