cut it

Poet, don’t end the poem—just cut it.

tested by the times

So many canonical poems that would be cut down in a workshop these days.

prune it back

As in gardening so it is in poetry, one should not be afraid to cut back the growth.

cliché tweaked

In some cases it makes sense not to cut the cliché but to twist it, to repurpose it, making its application more acceptable.

runover words

He had a funny habit of placing a line break so that the words starting the next line would be shown to be superfluous.

cut that alters

A line break that preempts the full thought and thus alters it.

safe for now

It’s a good thing you put that copyright mark next to your name beneath the poem, otherwise poets would be lined up to plagiarize your masterpiece.

no mail

The epistolary poem was marked ‘Return to Sender’.

come knocking

Reading the long poem, I thought to myself, Where is that man on business from Porlock when you need him to come knocking?

got the once-over

Nothing worse could be said of a poem than it was all artifice and surface.

singular path

Cut your own idiosyncratic path through literature.

severed vitals

Lines cut from its middle, an act of harakiri for the poem, and it was like the whole body folded over and collapsed.

beset piece

It could be described as a beset piece.