In an era of reductionist approaches to teaching and assessment, this dissertation returns to the fundamental question: "What is the value of writing, particularly poetry writing, in our society today?" The poet's central task, to abstract reality through symbols, requires profound cognitive and emotional work (Vendler, 2004; Steele,…

Poets' working drafts and their comments on their processes indicate overwhelmingly that they, like experienced writers of other genres, are extensive revisers. The biggest difficulty with the term "revising" is that it designates both the changes made to a text and the mental processes and attitudes that underlie these changes. Even the…