There's a word for it

Barbara Crooker on finding the best word

There's an Allen Ginsberg dictum known to most poets and followed by many: "First word, best word," he famously advised. But as well as that approach may work at times and may have worked for the Beat prophet, not all poets follow along.

"It's not always true," Barbara Crooker said recently, while discussing her own meticulous revisions of "In the Beginn…