I choose to revise this poem because of the challenge I was given by Dr. Pinkard: contemporize Mary Todd Lincoln. Although I was unsure of how to do this at first, the longer I looked at the poem, the more ways I saw to revise it. The first step in my revision was to cut out whatever lines or stanzas that would not fit into my new contemporary poem. With my highlighter and my pen, I highlighted the lines that I new would work in my new poem, and marked out those that would not. From these lines, I created a story. I used a five minute free write to create the story of someone meeting Mary Todd Lincoln. I attempted to answer: how did they meet her and what did they notice about her situation? With this story, I crafted my new poem. The first