Ellen Bryant Voigt: A Moment’s Thought: Some Notes on Revision (January 1996)

Ellen Bryant Voigt subverts the traditional paradigm of how poems are written: first inspiration, then work. Is it true that we need to experience a “given” moment, “sprung from the unconscious,” in order to begin writing? Voigt sets out to “adjust the fixed sequence” of this narrative; through a close reading of how Bishop drafted and revised “One Art,” her careful work ultimately yielding what feels “given” in the finished poem, Voigt shows how “vision may be the fruit of technique, not only its precursor.”