Bob Hicok Poetry Reading

Bob Hicok came to Coe on Thursday night to do a poetry reading.  Leading up to his arrival, all the English and Creative Writing professors were having their students read his poems.  I found myself really enjoying his poem, one of my favorites being "A History of Origami".  Needless to say, I was pumped for his reading.  Kesler was about half full, most of the students in attendance majoring in English or Creative Writing.  Hicok read a variety of his poems for about a half-an-hour and then opened the room up for questions.  The most interesting thing that came up during the question and answer session was about the revision process.  Hicok is against it, believing the first few lines of his poems create the message of the entire poem.  If the first lines don't satisfy him, he scraps the whole poem and begins again, the focus being on those first few lines.  He believes too many people think of revision as fixing something that is "broken."  Hicok doesn't consider his poems as broken things, rather, if he wants to fix them it's because there is a desire and want to fix, not because he is expected to fix them.  I thought it was a different view on the revision process and I hope I'll be able to discuss this idea with my peers and professors since in my opinion, revision is a very important part of the writing process.