THE DESK | No. 2

Focus: Craft Insights & Reflections

Shoring
An architecture of craft

by Phillip Shabazz

When a reader is inside a stanza, shine does not keep the structure from giving. Polish changes the finish. Shoring changes what the finish is attached to.

Consider a draft of five lines:

After the funeral she put the keys
in the bowl. The house was quiet.
She thought of calling her sister.
She did not call.

A polish pass will dress the diction. “Funeral” becomes “burial.” “Quiet” becomes “hushed.” “Thought of calling” becomes “almost reached for.” The stanza is smoother and says the same thing. The reader remains in a room with no new supports.

A shoring pass asks other questions. Which line is the wall? Which is furniture you could remove? Where is the reader allowed to rest?

If the fact that she does not call is the structure, the first lines exist to make that refusal stand. Then “The house was quiet” is not atmosphere. It is the interval in which a call could occur and does not. Cut “She thought of calling her sister.” Let the keys, the quiet, and the unmade call sit across the break. The reader rests in the gap the line-end opens.

After the funeral she put the keys
in the bowl. The house was quiet.

She did not call.

Nothing here is brighter. The joint is clearer. The pause after “quiet” now has a job. The last line is no longer a summary of a prior thought. It is the thing the stanza was built to hold.

Polish asks whether the language is nice. Shoring asks whether the structure can be occupied. After you enter, niceness is decoration. What matters is whether the floor remains when you take the next step.