For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Patty Nash’s poem “Metropolitan” appears in the new Summer issue of the Review, no. 248.

Do you have photos of different drafts of this poem?

I do not write in “drafts.” I just continue to write or tinker on the same poem until I can’t anymore. This means that it is hard to see earlier iterations of the poem—the earliest one I have access to is one that I sent to my friends, so it was somewhat presentable already. There are small line differences, however, and sometimes major ones. For example, I changed the gender of the protagonist in this section—here is a screenshot of an earlier version:

Lês fierder by The Paris Review