I've been lucky enough that the handful of manuscript critiques I've taken on have been pretty damn awesome manuscripts or loose material even before I laid a hand on them (and hopefully continued to be awesome after I put my fingers in them..lol..) But I was thinking today about what I am reading for, looking for, in any given project on that first pass through. What threads you can kind of catch and pull on that will unravel and then thread together in the end.
An in truth, every manuscript is different. I've been working right now with a past dgp author now who has various strings of poems in different thematic veins that we are attempting to parse a book out of--identifying things that hang together well. Other critiques were for books that were almost fully formed and just needed a second perspective and someone to spot some new strategies for organization, or even to help them articulate why they were making the decisions they were. To do things more intentionally than they may have before.
I've never been a fan of workshops for all sorts of reasons--not really for individual poems--not really for line edits and a thousand different possible roads you could take with a stanza or line, but working more intensely on mansucripts feels different somehow. More whole. The poems exist as they exist--and now, what do we do with them. Almost like clay--the ability to move them around and build different sorts of structures--THAT I love. I love the first reading, which I always feel is a little like a divination, what is this manuscript, these poems, saying and how can we get their message to be even clearer. Then a sussing out of themes and possible structures. Where to go from there--poems that are needed, poems that can be shed. I like to think of it sort of as being a book whisperer...
When I was putting together the fever almanac, I had no idea what I was doing and could have used someone to do something similar. And I guess I did eventually figure it out, much in the same process I do for other authors.. And maybe it's a testament to that process that, when it comes to my own projects now, I kind of do it now before the fact--the subsequent manuscripts are more clearly focused at the time things begin to constellate--my smaller series falling into line with others they have thematic or subject matter ties. sex & violence become a full book after I finished the love poems and thought they echoed things in dirty blonde and honey machine that might be worth the time of polishing. feed was a manuscript at the point I had finished the hunger place and plump. The only exception may have been girl show, which actually had many people's suggestions along the way on structures and sections (it was my MFA thesis.) Maybe some re-ordering during the editing process of sections with Sundress' help on major characters in minor films.
I wouldn't say the books write themselves exactly, but they emerge much more fully functional than they did initially. Sort of like ikea furniture that isn't exactly in pieces all over your living room, but more just need some bolts tightened and the casters put on.
(I do still have at least one opening for consultations in the summer if you'd like to work with me... check here for details)
