In the chapbook manuscript I’m working on now, it’s straightforward: the poem sequence is based on the life of a historical character and it’s (mostly) chronological. And I’m actually more likely to adjust an individual poem to maintain the sequence than to mess with the sequence to create space between poems. If two poems show up next to each other on the timeline and use similar images (or more likely with me, similarly consonant phrases in key places), I’ll take as shot at rewriting one of the poems rather than give up the sequence. But with a real life anchor, it’s easier to be rigid about order, I guess.

Speaking of ordering, I’m fixated on end poems right now. I just cut my first manuscript down to its shortest submitted length (20 poems), and one of the poems I gave up was that which had been the final one in all prior submissions. I think I completely changed the character of the book in the process and I hadn’t anticipated that. With that in mind: How did “Amazon Women on the Moon” come to change places so dramatically between Female Comic Book Superheroes and Becoming the Villainess? And was it purposeful?

Paragraphs 2 and 3 here describe my own manuscript organization process very closely. Always changing, adding/subtracting/reordering, getting advice from trusted readers (often conflicting, not always directly heeded), etc. Good to know I’m not the only one. 🙂

Thanks, David and Steve!
David, although “Amazon Women on the Moon” has a melancholy feeling that I thought made it a good closing poem for the chapbook, I decided to move it around in BTV for thematic reasons. I tried to keep almost all the “lighter” female comic book poems towards the beginning of the book, to follow that “heroine-to-villainess” trajectory I wanted. Also, the last poems in Becoming the Villainess all have themes of “escape,” while “Amazon…” is really more of a “loss” poem. That’s probably a lot more than you wanted to know, right? 🙂 But you’re right, changing the last poem does really change the whole emtional impact and timbre of a book.

I try to find a narrative in the poems, whether it’s common themes, words, thoughts, memories. I usually wind up on the floor making little stacks or having certain poems fanned out before me looking for links. The full-length manuscript I’m working on now has been the most difficult. I’ve reordered it, stripped it, changed the name, etc. and I still don’t feel like it’s right.

Thanks for the shout-out! 🙂 I am so fascinated with the whole manuscript-organization process right now. And I’m curious to see whether having thought deeply about this process changes my writing process for individual poems — do you find that it has changed yours at all?

I’m such a process junkie.

Thanks Anne!

And here’s a comment on behalf of Tom Hunley:

Jeannine,

I just took a few minutes off of processing manuscripts and read your latest blog entry (and Kell’s, and Anne’s). Here’s an
exercise from my textbook-in-process that touches on the topic:

Rocking the Chapbook

Objective: to help poets select and arrange poems for chapbook
manuscripts

Background: Since approximately 1553, when an enterprising poet
walked into an alehouse in Cambridgeshire, England, offering copies of
a scurrilous ballad called “maistres mass” for a penny or halfpenny,
chapbooks have been one of the key methods of distributing poetry.
There is a long tradition of self-published chapbooks, but many small
presses, such as Pudding House, Slipstream, and Finishing Line Press,
publish selective lines of chapbooks. Traditionally, they are staple
bound, though now some publishers such as Pecan Grove Press and
Concrete Wolf are printing perfect-bound, paperback chapbooks. In
other cases, chapbooks are printed as special sections of literary
journals such as Poems & Plays and Black Warrior Review. Some
chapbook publishers, such as Brooding Heron Press and Wood Works, use
hand-operated printing presses and hand-stitch the letters in each
book, creating beautiful limited-edition books. Typically, poets
first seek to publish chapbooks after they have published fairly
widely in respected literary journals but before they are ready to try
to have a first full-length book published. It is not just early-
career poets who publish chapbooks, though. It is not uncommon for an
established poet to put out a long poem, a sequence of poems, or an
experimental side project in the form of a chapbook. Louise Glück,
Alicia Ostricker, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Duncan are just a few
poets who come to mind who continued to publish chapbooks long after
their reputations were established.

Rationale for this Assignment: Due to their brevity (usually 15-30
pages in manuscript), chapbooks are typically held together by a
theme, a predominant tone, a subject matter, recurring images – some
kind of thread or through-line that permeates the book.
Rock/folk/rap/alternative etc. albums containing 10-20 songs generally
consist of roughly the same amount of lyric material as poetry
chapbooks. Have you ever been disappointed with an album because,
while you liked some of the songs enough to purchase the album, some
other songs don’t seem to belong? Or perhaps you like all the songs
on an album, but for some reason you would prefer to hear the songs in
a different order, and you can’t for the life of you figure out why
song X follows song Y? I once heard the poet Sam Green say that if a
book of poems contains nineteen poems, the book itself is the
twentieth poem; I believe this is true of albums as well, and that we
can learn a good deal about how to arrange a chapbook by studying the
way that great rock bands arrange their albums.

The Assignment: Analyze the arrangement of a great album (Tommy, The
Wall, Abby Road, OK Computer, Automatic for the People, Blood on the
Tracks, The Marshall Mathers LP, etc.). How does one song lead into
the other? Does the artist contrast tones and tempos, following a
power ballad with a fast, rollicking tune in a major key, for
example? Do short songs come before long songs? Are the songs united
by a recurring theme, by their subject matter, by musical style? What
balance has the artist struck between variety and continuity? How
well does the opening song function as a greeting or introduction?
What about the last song? How effective is it in giving listeners
closure? How appropriate is the title? Are there any songs that you
would have cut out or placed elsewhere on the album? Write a few
paragraphs analyzing the arrangement of an album. Then write a few
paragraphs applying the principles that you have observed to the
arrangement of your own chapbook manuscript.

Student Example:
In comparing the 1968 Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland to a
possible format for a chapbook, one gets a unique insight as to the
way in which a chapbook might flow from poem to poem. This could prove
especially effective in a collection with no clear theme, as one will
often arise on its own.
On the album there are sixteen songs, each one is independent
in content from all of the other songs (except of course for the two
very different version of “Voodoo Child”). In its originally intended
format, cut as two vinyl discs, the album is broken into four distinct
sides; each one with its own sound.
On the first side, Hendrix shows a basic format for the rest of the
album. The first song on the album “And the Gods Made Love” is most
similar to the third side of the album. It uses feedback and
experimental recording techniques which are akin to the longer
sections of the third side, especially the song “1983…A Merman I
Should Turn to Be.” In this way I might place my poem “My Father is
Magna Carta—1215” early in the chapbook to set a precedent for a tone
that will reappear. I could then have a section of poems later in the
chapbook that deals with the subject of family or possibly even death.
At the risk of being repetitious, I could include my poem “Becoming my
Father” nearer the end to augment this parallelism.
The fourth song “Voodoo Chile,” the last song on the first side, is
essentially the same as the last song of the album called “Voodoo
Child (Slight Return).” The longer “Voodoo Chile” uses elements from
all three of the subsequent sides. It has similar melodic phrasing to
the second side, but the tempo and structure of the more stretched out
third side. This song also has the over the top feedback playing that
is used heavily throughout the fourth side. To mirror this effect, I
might place my poem “Tennenbaum in Blue” early on in the chapbook. I
could then close with the poem “Straight No Chaser,” a poem about
Thelonius Monk, mirroring the cadence of “Tennenbaum,” as both are
heavily influenced by the tempos and rhythms of jazz. “Tennenbaum in
Blue” could also relate to other sections in the chapbook, since the
section about family might evoke a similar nostalgia as the images of
Christmas conjured in “Tennenbaum.” There is also the possibility that
the influence of the Beats may appear as a theme in several of the
poems (as is often the case). This could provide echoes in later
sections, were I to include the poem “Pollen (after Ginsberg).”
All in all, the album Electric Ladyland provides an
interesting format template that could be easily applied to a
chapbook, given that the poems have no specific thematic consistency. —
Chris Lively