Collecting

I don't know why the class I am teaching seems so much easier to teach than past composition classes I have taught. Perhaps it is the tiny size, or the fact that things are just starting and nothing of note is of yet happening. I haven't even had any assignments come in, except diagnostics. Or perhaps it is the summer of wrangling with new material in the workshop. Who knows?
But this seems to leave me with time to put together a collection of poetry. I have been writing poetry most of my life. That's a long time, almost 55 years. But a lot of it is stuff I would not want to include in a collection I am doing now.
I have always been one of those writers who does not produce a lot, revises a lot, puts things aside. Most things have not been chosen by editors to which I've sent them, though lately a few have. In the past, my sensibility was apparently not one with which editors felt particularly comfortable, though it is difficult to say why.
When I look at some of those old poems, I can tell why. There are great lines, but the poems as a whole do not seem to go anywhere. They in fact seem patched together, and perhaps were.
Some, however, I persist in thinking are worthy, and they will probably find a place in this or other collections.
Lately I've produced a few poems, and many seem to have similar shapes, if not subjects. I cannot afford to wait until I've produced enough of those to make a separate collection, despite advice by online commentators. I'd be dead first, I'm afraid. So I will look over the whole shebang as if someone else has written them, in as far as that is possible, and will make a shape. I already know some of what I will find: themes, for example, and subject matter. I prepare however to be surprised by shape and mode. (Is that possible, to prepare for surprise?) I hope I am surprised, anyhow.
Of course, I know from my spotty history of publication and the fact that people want a new collection of poetry like they want a disease that it will probably take a long time to find a home for this collection once I've put it together, but when I do publish and when I do air my stuff publically, people like it and want to see more. So I'll go with that.