From Yellow Springs News (in Antioch, Ohio), an interesting mathy-poetic story by writer Ed Davis -- entitled "Emergent Verse | A Poetry Workshop" -- in which is uses "Mental Math" by poet Maggie Dean and discusses the process of revising by moving toward brevity. The process shown is one that often happens as I write a poem -- it begins with a wordy ramble and over time I am able to improve my word choices and say as much or more with fewer words.
Here's the second section of Dean's poem followed by Davis's revision -- a move toward conciseness (nearly always a goal in mathematics).