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For Keeps [1]

Poetry [2]
7.12.22

In this week’s installment of our Craft Capsules series [3], Lauren Camp shares a technique she uses to salvage phrases from her poems that aren’t quite working. “Over the last few decades, I have maintained a Word document—I call it my ‘Keeps’ document,” Camp writes. “Into this file I paste my ‘darlings,’ margin to margin across the width and length of the page, smooshing them together with other beauties I couldn’t make work.” Inspired by Camp’s process, find a draft of a poem you have worked on but have yet to complete. Take a word or a line and repurpose it in a new poem. What surprising places do these words and phrases take you in your new work?


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/for_keeps_0

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/for_keeps_0 [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://www.pw.org/content/hold_your_darlings