I'm curious how you edit your poetry. A lot of what I write, I know it could be better, but I'm also afraid of losing the meaning and passion. It's not exactly like editing fiction, like I'm used to, I'd imagine.

A lot of my edits happen organically via just reading a poem over and over and over and over again. It helps that I have experience in slam poetry, because I’m able to be very conscious of how a poem reads, and that’s helpful with things like flow.

For me, it helps if I have an overall feeling I’m trying to achieve. Sometimes that feeling is something really abstract: a color or an image or a few bars of music. But having something to aim for makes editing easier, because you can remove anything that doesn’t move you towards that goal.

My best piece of advice is don’t be afraid to cut lines that don’t fit your poem, even if they’re really good lines. If you love them, write them down somewhere and save them for another poem. No matter how good or poetic or insightful something is, it’s worthless if it shows up in the wrong place.  Don’t let yourself get so enamored with a line that you’re afraid to get rid of it when it’s not working.