Using my experience as a poetry editor, literary critic, graduate-level teacher, and award-winning poet, I will assist you in identifying the strengths in your writing, and the steps that you can take to greatly enhance those strengths.
What a consultation includes:
- I prepare extensive and carefully considered notes on your poems (a few poems, a series, or a complete manuscript)
- I am happy to work with writers at any stage of a work’s development: freshly conceived work; work that you have submitted to contests, but that has not yet won; work that you have entirely reconceived and feels foreign to you in its new incarnation; and/or?
I have 17 years of experience in working with poets who have written manuscripts and with those who are novices. Of course, each work must teach us what it is, and what it is becoming. So, in that sense, we are all novices to each of our new manuscripts.
Our work together will focus on your writing’s strengths and potential. I tailor each consultation to the work at hand; every author is different. Here are some possible directions for our conversation to take:
- a conversation about the trajectory of the work, the relationship between the work’s forms and its subject matters (often there are many) and the fomenting of ‘meaning’ (we could call these “themes,” “threads of affect and ideation,” and other words that suggest the subtle and essential energies deep at play in the work); the relationship between sound and sense in the work;
- evaluating inclusion of lines, in a poem or poems in a manuscript, based on their value as language and their value to the larger work, the arc as it evolves in the work;
- line editing (noting strengths and making suggestions for potential enhancement and honing, asking questions to provoke further writing, suggesting alternatives); these suggestions/provocations may involve:
- word choice, diction,
- imagery, symbol, metaphoric, allegoric choices,
- use of rhythm, sonics/music/assonance/consonance,
- syntax,
- formal choices, text’s use of page, lineation, punctuation, etc.;
- consideration of order (in single poems, in series, and if in a manuscript: section orchestration, if appropriate);
- titles!;
- recommendations of next steps… as appropriate.
Fee explanation:
I charge a sliding scale between $250 and $300 an hour for my time with the work, and for our time meeting about the work. (However, should this price be an issue for you, let’s talk about spreading out payments or other alternatives.) While this does not clarify a ceiling, I can say that I read & then develop written comments with efficiency and intensity. A full manuscript consultation cost (including a few hours of meeting time) often runs up to, or around, or sometimes over, $2,000.
Reading 10 pages might be two hours of my reading time and comment-creating time, and then an hour of meeting-time. But these are rough estimates based on past experiences.
After you and I have agreed to begin a consultation process, I would ask you to send a deposit in check or money order or paypal, made out to “Rusty Morrison.”
The deposit payment would be sent to:
Rusty Morrison
1632 Elm Avenue
Richmond, CA 94805-1614
The payment, in-full, is due at the end of the meeting (I’d bring my list of the time spent and we’d add the time of the meeting).
No refunds of the deposit will be given unless I fail to perform the work as scheduled.
Return Consultations:
I am available for future consultations and I am excited to say that I have many excellent authors who return to me on many different projects. My schedule is sometimes full for a couple months in advance, since I want to give each author my full attention, and I have responsibilities to the press I co-publish, and to my own writing. It is very important to me that I can give each facet of this creative work my most intuitive and inspired attention.
Endorsements of Rusty’s Editing Work:
I was stunned speechless after Rusty’s probing and thoughtful and generous review of my ms.”Brimming” This isn’t a question, simply a comment to break my momentary “silence” My Biggest Takeaway: Cross currents. Your ideas have broken open a new vision for me. I see into my post-ms. experience, not clearly, but with excitement to discover a new way of envisioning a manuscript I hope to create. Your presentation was so powerful. It was an exceptional Colrain experience for me on every level. Many thanks to you, especially, for the momentous day yesterday, an experience I’ll grow from in months, years, to come.
––Kelly DuMar, Poet, Playwright, Writing Workshop Facilitator, and Guide
I’ve never had someone read my work with such close attention, or, if he/she/they have, I haven’t been in the room for it…. Having you recognize, acknowledge, and affirm that effort released many questions and burdens I’ve been carrying about my work. I felt seen in a profound way and valued for what I’ve thought of as my vulnerabilities. Your intellect, rigor, and understanding of poetics awed me and opened me. I’m so pleased to leave the conference with a new frame of understanding about how editors read work in general and how my own work might be read. I’m far into the manuscript believing the work can go new places — places where I can ask harder questions of both myself and readers and trust the effort will be seen.
“Dear Hazel,” and then paragraphs about my work that take me aback because of Rusty’s deep insight, which allows me to find myself as a writer again, to know how my work is coming alive in the mind of such a brilliant reader. That’s just the cover letter—which I will always keep. Rusty reads hundreds of manuscripts and is frank (although always kind) about what’s unoriginal, quick to see what’s really going on, and generous in her support of what’s mysterious and not on the page. She marks manuscript pages heavily, as needed—I worry about how much time she has spent. I was badly stuck on my second book manuscript. She set me gently and firmly back to work, her model of discipline, precision, and generosity now populating my practice. I’m really pleased with the results and immensely grateful to Rusty.
After graduating from an MFA program and leaving the workshop space, I struggled to complete my second manuscript. And then I started working with Rusty Morrison. Her editorial consultations are akin to a one-on-one masters class in poetics, prosody, close reading, editing, and revision. Rusty guided me, line by line, through my manuscript. She taught me how to see what each poem, and the collection as a whole, was trying to become. She taught me how to ask questions, take risks, and let go. It is because of her generosity and honesty, that my second book achieved its potential. Every emerging poet should have an editor like Rusty.
“Constructive criticism” is a term so overly-used that I had begun to think it had lost its meaning. However, working with Rusty on my manuscript I realized the true nature of this concept: focused attention that helps build a work to its maximum potential. This is exactly what Rusty offered to my manuscript: a keen, careful eye that located the book’s strengths and weaknesses; practical strategies for addressing these issues; attunement to detail as well as to structural harmonies and conflicts. What I have learned from Rusty has been indispensable not only to the manuscript at hand, but for my future growth as a writer.
Knowledge, Forms the Aviary, Iteration Nets (both from Ahsahta), and A Conjoined Book (Omnidawn),
and editor of Fence Books’ Constant Critic poetry book review website
Rusty Morrison gave my Aspiration essay a fabulous line-edit. She has perfect eyes when it comes to spotting weaknesses and, as they used to say, “infelicities.” Very often her suggestions resulted in revisions that improved the work in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. I recommend her highly.
including Aspirations (Omnidawn); his latest book is Fire Break (Nightboat)
As a later-life poet, I was lucky to meet Rusty. Because she sees with both her experienced eye and her wise heart, she was able to pinpoint the pulse of what I was trying to write, identify a few gems, and guide me in a clear direction. The form kept evolving and Rusty was able to allow it to breathe without relinquishing any commitment to craft. Since then, I’ve spoken with a number of others, more accomplished than I am, who have benefitted from Rusty’s guidance. We always talk about her ability to see into the heart of a poem while hearing every clunky note.
I have been writing and participating in groups, programs, and classes for almost 50 years, and I have NEVER worked with anyone who has even approached Rusty’s insights, her ability to put herself into another’s mind, heart, and voice, and Rusty does it with mind and heart joined, as we all try to write. Also, in my next book I have short poems in series, longer poems, photos, AND prose, and Rusty has brilliant and absolutely helpful things to say about it all.
With my manuscript in her hands, Rusty provided insight that allowed me to re-see my work, envision new possibilities. Along with analysis that revealed key themes and patterns of form and structure, she applied theory to illuminate narrative arcs and unpack psychological and spiritual complexities the poems called forth. Her perceptions opened my eyes and ears to currents rippling through and surfacing from the language. Her inclusive review was interwoven with generous readings that honed in on diction and phrasing; her edits demonstrated sensitivity and nuance, honored each piece’s intention. Compassionate yet incisive, Rusty found the best in my poems—and offered tools that helped me realize their full power.
–Brian Komei Dempster, author of the poetry collections, Topaz and Seize, published by Four Way Books