A practical guide to ten common poetry workshop mistakes—over-explaining, weak line breaks, vague imagery, and more—with clear fixes for revising stronger poems.

Free verse and fixed forms solve different problems. Here is how to tell which one your poem needs, and how to test the choice before you commit.

A practical, pass-by-pass revision checklist for poets: tighten imagery, line breaks, and sound line by line, while protecting the odd, necessary choices that make a poem sound like a person.