Art and Life

It’s no surprise that in fiction the central figures

Tend to learn more by the end than people

Commonly learn in the actual world,

Where many keep making the same mistakes.

Novelists start with their own experience,

Which includes going to bed convinced

That their current project is almost finished,

Only to find, in the candid light of morning,

That it still needs many more months of work.

What better proof that learning goes on

Even in sleep, that one’s sense of fitness

Grows in the night like corn or bamboo?

Is the newest version truer to life

Or simply more shapely, more charming?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

The hero before was recognizable,

A man, say, liable to fritter away his life

In random pastimes. But now he does more

To resist his temperament, so readers,

Instead of looking down from on high,

May be willing to stand in his shoes awhile.

As for the heroine, the revision suggests

She still is a woman who hides,

Beneath her apparent warmth, a seam of coldness.

But now the coldness conceals a wound

That makes trust a challenge.

Now she wants to know where her courage

Is supposed to come from

If she can’t find it when she looks within.

The more they learn, the truer they are in spirit

To the fact that every draft of the novel

Is another chapter in the single story

Slowly unfolding in which the author

Learns by trial and error what the work

Needs more of to be complete.

In the meantime, it’s clear that the hero’s remorse

Near the end of the manuscript for the grief

His want of direction has caused the heroine

Is more convincing than it’s ever been.

Instead of giving a speech that seems

Too polished to be spontaneous,

He seems to be groping for words, not sure

What he’ll say until he says it, and then

Not sure if he ought to be satisfied

Or open to one more try.