One must

I found I was revising too much instead of writing new poems, and that’s how I found out, again…that poetry is not Play-Doh. You can’t take a poem and keep reforming it. It is itself, and you have to know how to cut it.

Audre Lorde (1979 interview with Adrienne Rich)

— Dr. Han VanderHart is on Bluesky (@hmvanderhart) July 27, 2019