I sent my collection to four trusted readers: Greg Freeman, Stephen Claughton, John Wheeler, and Cheryl McLennon. The instructions were vague: read the poems and let me know if you have any comments.
It was one of the best decisions I made. It was expecting far too much from each person to read all 102 poems and provide detailed feedback, so I’ll have to do the difficult bit myself. I became someone else. I had to wear different hats to look at a problem to ask what sort of hard questions they would demand of each poem:
Wearing the curator’s hat. Does it earn its place in the collection? A poem that works on its own may still be deadweight in a collection. Ask whether it adds something the other poems do not: a different tone, a different angle, a necessary pause or acceleration. If you could remove it and nothing would be lost, it probably should go.
Wearing the architect’s hat. Does its form work? (Short answer: no. Loose free verse became poems in three-line tercets.) Form is not decoration. It is an argument about how the content should be experienced. Free verse can feel like a default rather than a decision. Ask whether the shape of the poem on the page is working for or against what the poem is trying to do.
Wearing the navigator’s hat. Is there a turn, a moment where something shifts? This is sometimes called the volta. It does not have to be dramatic, but something needs to change: the speaker’s understanding, the emotional register, the angle of vision. A poem without a turn is usually just a description. The turn is where the poem becomes a poem.
Wearing the carpenter’s hat. Do the lines and stanzas end in the right place? The end of a line is the most powerful position in a poem. It creates a small moment of suspension before the reader moves on. Look at what word is sitting at the end of each line and ask whether it deserves that emphasis. The same goes for stanza breaks, which are like a longer breath, a chance to let something land before moving forward.
Wearing the critic’s hat. Is the poem unclear? Is it interesting? These are two separate questions and both matter. A poem can be perfectly clear and completely inert. It can also be interestingly strange but so obscure it locks the reader out. You are looking for the productive middle ground: a poem that rewards attention without demanding decoding.
Wearing the doorman’s hat. Does the ending explain what the poem already showed rather than open beyond it? Weak endings tend to summarise or interpret, telling the reader what to feel about what they have just read. Strong endings trust the poem and the reader. They tend to open outward rather than close down, leaving a resonance rather than a conclusion.
Wearing the conductor’s hat. Is the poem rushing past its best moments or lingering past its welcome? Read the poem aloud and notice where you want more time and where you want to move on. A poem that races through its most interesting image has probably not understood where its centre of gravity is. A poem that keeps going after its natural ending has not trusted itself to stop.
Wearing the surgeon’s hat. Are there unnecessary lines? Most poems are too long. Look for lines that repeat what has already been said, that explain an image rather than let it stand, or that exist only to get to the next line. Cut them and see if the poem gets stronger. It usually does.
Wearing the detective’s hat. Does it actually sound like me? This is one of the hardest questions because it requires you to know what your voice actually is. Look for lines that feel borrowed, that sound like a poem rather than like you. If you read a line and think someone else could have written it, that is worth examining. The goal is not to be different for its own sake but to be specific, and specificity is where voice lives.
Wearing the gatekeeper’s hat. Does the opening earn entry quickly, or is the real poem buried a few stanzas in? Writers often need to write their way into a poem, which means the first draft frequently has a false start at the top. Read the poem and ask where it actually begins. If the third stanza is where things come alive, consider cutting everything above it and seeing what happens.
Wearing the diver’s hat. Is the poem about what it thinks it is about, or is there a deeper subject trying to surface? A poem about a walk in the woods may actually be about grief. A poem about a childhood kitchen may actually be about forgiveness. Sometimes the stated subject is a way in to something the writer has not quite named yet. If you can feel a pressure beneath the surface of a poem, try to identify what it is and ask whether the poem is fully addressing it.
Wearing the traveller’s hat. Does the poem move? Does something change between the first line and the last? By the final line, the poem should have taken you somewhere. The change can be subtle, a shift in tone, a slight reframing, a new image that recasts everything before it. But if the last line could swap places with the first without any real loss, the poem is standing still.
Wearing the gardener’s hat. Are the images doing work, or are they decoration? An image should earn its place by doing something that direct statement cannot. It should illuminate, complicate, or extend the poem’s meaning. If an image is simply pretty, or simply there, ask what would happen if you removed it. If the answer is nothing, it is probably decoration.
Wearing the hat that keeps falling off. Where does the poem lose you, even slightly? That is usually where the problem is. This is the most useful instinct an editor can develop. You do not always need to know why a poem loses you, only to notice that it does. A moment of confusion, a line that feels off, a stanza where your attention drifts: these are signals. Mark them and bring them to the writer. The problem may not be exactly where you felt it, but it will be nearby.
Rodney Wood 