SOURCE: “Revision in Action: Chipping and Building,” in Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt, The University of Michigan Press, 1982, pp. 79-98.

In the following essay, Piercy explicates the final stages of her creative process, in particular how she revises and finishes her poems.

I have put together three accounts of the process of writing through various drafts toward the finished poems. Each of these brief descriptions includes the various drafts of the poem I was working on. Each process offers a somewhat different route between onslaught and finished product, with differing problems to solve en route.

how “becoming New” Became

“Becoming new” started as a rambling love lyric of no particular distinction in first draft. Not atypically, however, for the type of poem revised by cutting as much as by rewriting, most of the imagery of which the later poem would be built was present in the wordy original...