Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The most underappreciated profession in our entire society is the public defender. They are paid terribly, almost never given the financial (or other) support they need to do their jobs properly, are treated by the general public with all the respect accorded to a Mafia consigliere, if not a pedophile. Yet they are the sole line of defense for our most vulnerable citizens against any possible miscarriage of justice in the hands of an exceptionally powerful, and oft brutal, state. In many respects, the integrity of the Constitution rests squarely on their shoulders. And their clients – who include many people guilty of the worst crimes imaginable – are no prize either. Plus I know, because I have quite a few friends in the field of criminal defense, that it can be the most pressure filled job in the universe. Some of your clients just might get killed by the state, depending on where you work. And depending on how well you did (or didn’t) do your job.
Which may be why I usually cut Seth Abramson, a former public defender, a little slack when I see him behaving like a lawyer amidst a gaggle of poets. And, as you’ll see, I’m going to cut him a lot of slack here. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with his consulting firm assisting wannabe writers in getting into the MFA or Writing Ph.D. program of their choice. Poorly marketed, ineptly priced, perhaps. But I don’t think what he is doing ultimately is any different from the more established poet who sets up their private workshop or one-on-one writing consultation/mentoring services – and there are dozens of those around. What is unique about his service is its business-like approach. This fits in perfectly with things Abramson has done in the past, such as ranking writing programs entirely by the funding they make available to students, rather than by the kinds of writing they promote, nor even by the percentage of graduate students who may get the rare job in the end.
Underneath each of these activities on Abramson’s part lies a larger vision of poetry in American life. It’s really worth taking a hard look at this, because Abramson’s take is new & different. And important. As I have noted previously, I think that Abramson overestimates the actual number of publishing poets in English, which suggests (to me at least) that, if I could fully fathom it, I would likewise disagree with his sense of the absolute number of wannabe poets who might be out there, thinking about enrolling in a creative writing program somewhere, the TAM or total addressable market for his consulting services. What I don’t disagree with Abramson about at all is the underlying trend towards dramatic expansion in the number of poets, potential & practicing, in the USA. And his attempts to monetize this perception of his point in interesting – and conceivably disturbing – directions for what they imply about poetry.
Let’s envision a spectrum. At one end of it is a world in which the right (and ability) to create poetry lies in the hands of a select few, often controlled by the church or state. At the far end is a world in which poetry has become the birthright of every literate human, something any thinking individual would want to practice. At this end of the spectrum, poetry aspires not so much to the “sphere of light” or attendant “five-foot bookshelf” of high modernism, but rather something closer to yoga, pilates or t’ai chi. Not necessarily a spiritual practice – tho it clearly can be one in the hands of the right people – but not exactly not one either.
Implicit in Abramson’s view of poetry, this spectrum is historical time. We are moving away from poetry as a literature – let alone as a canon – toward poetry as a practice, not so terribly different from mindfulness meditation (or maybe mindfulness meditation turned inside out, towards words rather than away from them). Not that vestiges of the older ways won’t linger on – they always do – but their role going forward can only be much less forceful, less hegemonic. Who cares ultimately if the SoQ monopolizes all the prizes in the world? You still have your notebook & your text. There are many more avenues today than there were just five years ago to get your work to your friends, what with Lulu & e-publishing. And do you really need to reach more than your friends?
I’ve never seen Abramson articulate what is going on in quite this way, but he doesn’t have to. He’s acting on this vision. In this perspective, the dramatic growth in creative writing programs around the U.S. is not a bad thing, but a good one, and not just because it creates jobs for MFAs. Rather, it is creating the infrastructure for a new world of poetics, one that is both larger & more decentralized, potentially more democratic, where poetry borders on a recreational activity as much as it does an intentional process. Imagine, 10 or 20 years from now, that all of today’s book clubs have become local writer’s workshops.
How one feels about this, I suspect, has a lot to do with where one sits on that imaginary spectrum. In this regard, I’m pretty old school – I still feel that the big questions are the ones posed for the most part under the banner of modernism. And that the really big questions have to do with what went wrong with modernism (short answer: lots) and can anything be done to go back & do it right, rather than the disparate conundra of the postmodern, so-called.
On the other hand, I don’t feel poetry as a practice is a threat. If anything, it’s close (and increasingly closer) to my practice. Which may be the side, or aspect, of slow poetry that resonates with me. But at the same time, I don’t necessarily feel that it’s a choice, either. Perhaps it’s because I’m not sure – not at all – that I buy the idea of this spectrum & the sense of inevitability that seems to attach to poetry as a growth market. Which is what Seth Abramson has been all about.
Perhaps this is because I’m old enough to recall the last great period of educational expansion, which ran between the end of World War 2 & 1973. It was a period that saw a dramatic expansion of colleges & universities, and the first glimmer of expansion among creative writing programs as well. Many of the New American & School of Quietude poets alike lived during the latter part of this period as a kind of celebrity migrant labor, moving from one visiting professorship to the next. Even a school without a writing program, like Berkeley, had on its faculty at the time Josephine Miles, Tom Parkinson, Ron Loewinsohn, David Henderson, Lillian Hellman, Denise Levertov, Richard Tillinghast, James Tate, Robin Magown & Robert Grenier. After Levertov left Berkeley for Tufts, she was followed by Grenier, who was in turn followed by Kenneth Irby, a grad student at Berkeley.
All of this came to an abrupt end on January 27, 1973, when Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the end of the draft, and the creation of the all volunteer army. Without the impetus of the draft (with its none-too-subtle stay-in-school-or-die subtext) the expansion of higher education – and especially of the liberal arts – leveled off dramatically. Ph.D.’s no longer were guaranteed jobs, and writers who had jobs dug in as best they could to keep them.
It’s instructive to note what English Departments did in order to survive the downturn. Away with Spenser, Chaucer, Milton, courses few undergraduates wanted to take. Increase the number of creative writing classes. At UC San Diego, the growth in the number of writing courses was such that the already existing faculty had to figure out how to meet the need for writing instructors without inadvertently turning the department over to (shudder) poets. They did this by creating a rotating visiting professorship – I was one of these in 1982 – and by using adjuncts, local poets who could be counted on to work for peanuts & with no benefits to speak of. The whole point was to maximize the number of writing teachers while limiting any control on their part of the parent department.
I would say that this was the dynamic at many schools that first gave rise to writing programs as separate, autonomous entities. It gave the writers already on campus a chance to direct their own work lives and maybe offer a few real jobs to otherwise suffering adjuncts. In the two instances I’ve been able to watch reasonably closely, the persons arguing for the new program did so on the grounds that it would increase enrollment without demanding significant resources on the part of the school. “It’s a money maker,” I’ve been told. More than once. (And it’s in this context that Abramson’s roster of MFA programs ranked by the amount of support they give to students might make some real sense … at least, if that were the primary consideration & the schools listed were otherwise equivalent to one another.)
But all of this is a scenario predicated upon a market of unending growth. It presumes that within a couple of decades, we’ll all look back at just how few poets there seemed to be in 2009, compared with the hundreds of thousands in 2040. If at some point the ongoing growth of the post-secondary educational system should have a hiccup on the order, say, of the end of the draft, there are going to be a lot of creative writing programs on chancellors’ short lists of departments to cut. And there are going to be even fewer jobs for graduates of these programs.
I’m looking right now at the funding crisis in the California college systems, which are facing cuts on the order of 20 percent for the next school year & thinking to myself that, as in so many other things, California once again looks very much like the canary in the coal mine here. And I’m reminded of something Jack Gilbert said, more than once, while I was in his classes at San Francisco State in the 1960s. It was not quite a mantra, but he said it often enough that all of his students got to hear it. “The most important gift I can give any student in a writing program is to advise them to stop. If they are going to be a writer, they’ll be a writer whether they’re here or not. But getting a degree won’t make them a writer, it won’t even make them a decent teacher of writers.”
That may be right, but Jack’s presumption was that most of them weren’t writers, regardless of what degrees they had. He clearly bought into the five-foot bookshelf conception of literature & wasn’t so terribly certain that it shouldn’t be trimmed to a two-foot bookshelf at that. Abramson, two generations later & operating on a very different framework, looks at the 17,397 applications that the 50 most selective creative writing programs had last year. He knows that most of the applicants applied to multiple schools, but he also knows that there are something like 800 degree granting writing programs right now in the US. Even if we presume that half of these schools offer the degree only at the bachelor’s level, and that the less selective schools get fewer applications (say one-third fewer) than the “top 50” (some of which admit fewer than two percent of all applicants), that still yields a total of 98,989 applications just for one year. If the average applicant applies to six schools, that still means that some 16,500 people, actual individuals, tried to get into MFA programs. That is Abramson’s TAM for his services. The questions for his embryonic program are: can he reach these applicants, what percent can he convert into paying customers, and how much better than “the average” applicant will they do? I’m pretty sure that he must know what the real numbers behind this little back-of-the-napkin exercise happen to be, what that actual average is, and possibly even what level of acceptance his customers need to reach in order for him to go forward saying that he can increase your chances of getting into a program by X percent.
But all of this implies what I would call a close linkage between the number of would-be writers (not all poets by any means, since these numbers also comingle fictioneers, screenwriters & playwrights, & those mysterious practitioners of the “personal essay”) and these writing programs. While I do think it’s true today that most poets at least have a B.A. in something, that hasn’t always been the case, and there’s no particular reason to think that it always will need to be the case. The vocationalization of college is apt to shift the terms of the process as are any future sense of aesthetics. If writing does manage to cross over from the Great Books sphere-of-light role in general culture to something more akin to your local yoga class, administrators & educational theorists are going to look hard at the role of writing in the curriculum.
This leads me to my last question: what percentage of those 16,500 hopeful souls really are already writers? With the advent of e-publishing and the internet, the barriers to first publication are lower than ever. Yet I recall when I was in the writing program at SF State, as well as in the English Department at UC Berkeley, always being surprised at how many of my peers imagined themselves to be years away from “being ready.” I had, after all, started to publish before I went to college. This makes me realize how much this little kerfluffle over AbramsonLeslieConsulting, and the questions it raises about writing (which are really what generates the emotional energy over its presence) is just the tip of a very large iceberg. What we do know is this: writing is changing its social function in our society; many would-be writers see the MFA as a means for responding to, maybe even surviving, these changes; the MFA itself is changing its role with regards to writing; there are a lot of plausible responses to this & Seth Abramson’s is one.
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poetry as a practice, not so terribly different from mindfulness meditation ... Who cares ultimately if the SoQ monopolizes all the prizes in the world? You still have your notebook & your text. There are many more avenues today than there were just five years ago to get your work to your friends, what with Lulu & e-publishing.
This comes quite close to my own view. I think I'd nudge "meditation" toward "prayer". And the thought of publishing prayers, no matter how well wrought or insightful has an odd flavor to it.
I would trace my view from origins in my California Poets in the Schools poet teachers (Maureen Hurley & Zara Altair) who taught a poetry writing class at my high school, much of which was based on instructional texts by Kenneth Koch (Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, for instance). Koch advocated teaching poetry appreciation - and poetry writing - to the average person, to children, to residents of nursing homes. Was this Art Therapy? Yes, in a way, but I don't find that belittling; we take tea with our demons (& angels) many ways. And why shouldn't art & poetry be available to everyone?
I found a great deal of freedom (one might say 'means of escape'!) in poetry and did fancy publishing books of it - I'd always thought it would be great to publish books, although I rather wished they would write themselves. (Ask me sometime about self-generating texts.) As time has gone on, however, I've found less & less access to the energy that pushed me to publish.
Along the way I found encouragement in Jerome Rothenberg's ethnopoetics & technologies of the sacred - the Eskimo songs, as Rothenberg explained it, arise out of the daily lives of ordinary persons, dream visions are respected as the paths given each individual, where poetry & art are part of daily life, and part of spiritual practice.
Recently I took a break from poetry - a year off - though I continued to write poems in my head. But the year exorcized some demons of worldly ambition; I miss them a bit, but I enjoy the writing again. The poems in my head find place on the page now, too.
This comes quite close to my own view. I think I'd nudge "meditation" toward "prayer". And the thought of publishing prayers, no matter how well wrought or insightful has an odd flavor to it.
I would trace my view from origins in my California Poets in the Schools poet teachers (Maureen Hurley & Zara Altair) who taught a poetry writing class at my high school, much of which was based on instructional texts by Kenneth Koch (Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, for instance). Koch advocated teaching poetry appreciation - and poetry writing - to the average person, to children, to residents of nursing homes. Was this Art Therapy? Yes, in a way, but I don't find that belittling; we take tea with our demons (& angels) many ways. And why shouldn't art & poetry be available to everyone?
I found a great deal of freedom (one might say 'means of escape'!) in poetry and did fancy publishing books of it - I'd always thought it would be great to publish books, although I rather wished they would write themselves. (Ask me sometime about self-generating texts.) As time has gone on, however, I've found less & less access to the energy that pushed me to publish.
Along the way I found encouragement in Jerome Rothenberg's ethnopoetics & technologies of the sacred - the Eskimo songs, as Rothenberg explained it, arise out of the daily lives of ordinary persons, dream visions are respected as the paths given each individual, where poetry & art are part of daily life, and part of spiritual practice.
Recently I took a break from poetry - a year off - though I continued to write poems in my head. But the year exorcized some demons of worldly ambition; I miss them a bit, but I enjoy the writing again. The poems in my head find place on the page now, too.
Ron, I've always admired you, I think (hope) you know that. Not that I think you need/want my admiration. I'm just saying this is a damn fine post, in the context of a blogging career which has featured (in my view) many damn fine--if also problematic--posts.
I don't have much to add except to say--and anyone can choose to believe me or not, I can't do anything about it--much of what I've done, including the rankings and ALC (and for that matter writing poetry and attending an MFA) I've stumbled across to my own surprise and then simply tried to do to the best of my ability. Chris and I aren't businessmen. If you understand our business model, which emphasizes associates over partners, you'll understand that there isn't much money in this--my own attorney seems to feel it's not viable financially, i.e. couldn't get anyone much above the poverty line doing it full-time, that it's really a labor of love. I agree. I only say this because this is the first time I've seen the acronym TAM, and while I've thought a lot about how many poets there are that wasn't an impetus for ALC. The impetus was a conversation with Chris, realizing we both liked working with younger writers, and trying to see if we could do something with that which would a) be helpful to writers (not just as applicants but as artists), and b) earn us some modest income for our talents as writers and readers. The reason the website looks serious is because I try to do things professionally when I can. But the truth is that there wasn't nearly the forethought behind this, financially, I think you're assuming.
Also: we will never work with any writer we don't believe has the talent to go on to graduate school in the field (as the site says), as both Chris and I agreed during our first conversation that we wouldn't be involved with this if the money became more important than honesty with writers. Our assessments have earned a reputation for their candor--we don't pull punches, not ever. Nor will we ever advertise the mathematical benefit of our services. I come from a profession in which, for instance, it is considered unethical (and a violation of bar regulations) to provide your won-lost record in an advertisement of legal services; I believe in that, so we will never advertise in the way you suggest because it's an implied promise I'd consider disingenuous. And so the website makes clear that we're not guaranteeing clients anything in terms of application success. What that does is put the burden on us--which is right where we want it--to prove to each writer, individually, that we've provided them with the sort of feedback which helps them improve as an artist.
Many of our clients haven't had the benefit of a mentor to look over their portfolio--and I mean "portfolio" in the general sense, i.e. their strongest work, not in the MFA sense. I think you know, Ron, my particular fondness and empathy for young writers without mentors and without guidance. I was (am) one; I'd like to be a part of helping others avoid the same fate, and (for those who wonder) yes, of course I'll be working on the side for free with students and young writers I meet in person. ALC is an attempt to reach a larger group, but it's hardly an admission that writers shouldn't or can't give of themselves freely, too. Do you really think a former public defender even knows how to stop trying to help people? It's what PDs do, both during their careers and after they retire; you don't do the job in the first place if you're not that way.
As to marketing/pricing, again, any ineptness is due to the fact that we're not businessmen. What birthed ALC was wanting to help support ourselves doing two things we love: a) reading within our genre, and b) working with young writers. Both Chris and I have taught courses in our respective genres, and both he and I see our role with ALC as trying to offer the same sort of careful guidance and instruction we offered in every one-on-one sit-down we've ever had with a tuition-paying student.
I don't have much to add except to say--and anyone can choose to believe me or not, I can't do anything about it--much of what I've done, including the rankings and ALC (and for that matter writing poetry and attending an MFA) I've stumbled across to my own surprise and then simply tried to do to the best of my ability. Chris and I aren't businessmen. If you understand our business model, which emphasizes associates over partners, you'll understand that there isn't much money in this--my own attorney seems to feel it's not viable financially, i.e. couldn't get anyone much above the poverty line doing it full-time, that it's really a labor of love. I agree. I only say this because this is the first time I've seen the acronym TAM, and while I've thought a lot about how many poets there are that wasn't an impetus for ALC. The impetus was a conversation with Chris, realizing we both liked working with younger writers, and trying to see if we could do something with that which would a) be helpful to writers (not just as applicants but as artists), and b) earn us some modest income for our talents as writers and readers. The reason the website looks serious is because I try to do things professionally when I can. But the truth is that there wasn't nearly the forethought behind this, financially, I think you're assuming.
Also: we will never work with any writer we don't believe has the talent to go on to graduate school in the field (as the site says), as both Chris and I agreed during our first conversation that we wouldn't be involved with this if the money became more important than honesty with writers. Our assessments have earned a reputation for their candor--we don't pull punches, not ever. Nor will we ever advertise the mathematical benefit of our services. I come from a profession in which, for instance, it is considered unethical (and a violation of bar regulations) to provide your won-lost record in an advertisement of legal services; I believe in that, so we will never advertise in the way you suggest because it's an implied promise I'd consider disingenuous. And so the website makes clear that we're not guaranteeing clients anything in terms of application success. What that does is put the burden on us--which is right where we want it--to prove to each writer, individually, that we've provided them with the sort of feedback which helps them improve as an artist.
Many of our clients haven't had the benefit of a mentor to look over their portfolio--and I mean "portfolio" in the general sense, i.e. their strongest work, not in the MFA sense. I think you know, Ron, my particular fondness and empathy for young writers without mentors and without guidance. I was (am) one; I'd like to be a part of helping others avoid the same fate, and (for those who wonder) yes, of course I'll be working on the side for free with students and young writers I meet in person. ALC is an attempt to reach a larger group, but it's hardly an admission that writers shouldn't or can't give of themselves freely, too. Do you really think a former public defender even knows how to stop trying to help people? It's what PDs do, both during their careers and after they retire; you don't do the job in the first place if you're not that way.
As to marketing/pricing, again, any ineptness is due to the fact that we're not businessmen. What birthed ALC was wanting to help support ourselves doing two things we love: a) reading within our genre, and b) working with young writers. Both Chris and I have taught courses in our respective genres, and both he and I see our role with ALC as trying to offer the same sort of careful guidance and instruction we offered in every one-on-one sit-down we've ever had with a tuition-paying student.
P.S. FWIW, you haven't captured my view of poetry in America very accurately, though I do believe this was a well-intended analysis. I have said, and I believe, that MFAs don't make writers. An MFA is not a prerequisite to being a writer, and many MFA graduates won't end up being writers. These reasons (and others) are why I've also said, consistently, that no one should pay much if anything--and preferably nothing--for an MFA. The increasing popularity of the MFA (140 full-res programs, 45 low-res programs, 6 more founded each year on average) means more individuals get the opportunity--the time and space and community and support--to discover whether or not they will commit themselves for the next forty to sixty years of their lives to art. I never forget, though I fear some do, that the MFA is only one stop on a life-long journey, if a stop at all (as many eschew it, which is fine); no one comes out of an MFA with a fully-formed aesthetic, thank God. As artists, as humans, we grow or we die. Anyway, my point is just that more people going to MFAs means more Americans with an appreciation for, and a love of, poetry (and fiction, and memoir, and so on). And among those who become lifelong writers as well as readers of literature--something one really doesn't know about oneself until many years after the MFA--the MFA will, hopefully, have given them that much more time and space and emotional/communal support and guidance to become the best writers they possibly can be. But to imply (which you may do here, albeit unintentionally) that I think every Tom, Dick, and Harry who walks out of an MFA is going to be an importance voice--a voice with equal audience in the poetry-reading community--when they graduate just isn't so. Discerning readers of poetry won't suddenly lose their powers of discernment because there are more people in the crowd; love of poetry will always spur us to find that needle-in-a-haystack poet, whatever the size of the haystack. Nor would the yoga analogy work, because I don't necessarily assume all or even most MFA graduates will be writing within their genre, at least not regularly, ten years after graduation. But does anyone really think that'll cause them to regret attending a fully-funded Master's program where they got to focus just on reading and writing and discussing poetry with fellow writers (young and old), to learn more about themselves and others as writers? No, I think at worst some will say it didn't move the ball of their lives either way. But I think it'd be a strange duck who felt actual regret, just as I'm not a practicing attorney now and nevertheless haven't regretted for even a second my law degree. And that, for sure, was not free. --S.
I wasn't aware of "AbramsonLeslieConsulting." I just had a look at their site.
If that were the unavoidable future of poetry I think I'd have to convert my interest into something else, maybe gardening. Homer to Ashbery...we had a good run.
One hopes that anyone who participates in that sort of scheme will end up along with last years receipts and dogfood containers at the garbage dump (or taking up unread blog and ebook space).
Really, Abramson &c., I would be on edge in fear the Muses might strike me down if I were you.
If that were the unavoidable future of poetry I think I'd have to convert my interest into something else, maybe gardening. Homer to Ashbery...we had a good run.
One hopes that anyone who participates in that sort of scheme will end up along with last years receipts and dogfood containers at the garbage dump (or taking up unread blog and ebook space).
Really, Abramson &c., I would be on edge in fear the Muses might strike me down if I were you.
There is another change in terms of the place of writing in North American education: the concept of 'writing to learn' activities, often creative writing responses to particular texts or lessons. These 'writing to learn' activities are an engagement with a text through a creative writing response rather than the traditional essay. Not that creative writing hasn't always (or often) been in response to other writing, but these exercises, though they can aspire to 'literature', also point to creative writing as having a different function. (Of course, in many cases, creative writing which is not a 'writing-to-learn' activity within a elementary or secondary school setting often has a different function and a different goal than the creation of literature per se.)
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And...as someone married to a criminal defender in Canada, there could be an entirely other post about the poetics (and rhetoric) of criminal defence. In many cases, conventional language attempts to make a break for it.
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And...as someone married to a criminal defender in Canada, there could be an entirely other post about the poetics (and rhetoric) of criminal defence. In many cases, conventional language attempts to make a break for it.
I have a hard time deciding what to say in these very public debates but I will say that I like this idea of equating the writing of poetry to the act of meditation.
Not everyone I met in my MFA program was planning on teaching, some just wanted to write and become better writers, some wanted to become editors etc. There are lots of reasons for obtaining an MFA, just as there are as many reasons to simply DO the act of writing.
I find it hard to say anything bad about the pursuit of education in general.
Now back to writing :)
Not everyone I met in my MFA program was planning on teaching, some just wanted to write and become better writers, some wanted to become editors etc. There are lots of reasons for obtaining an MFA, just as there are as many reasons to simply DO the act of writing.
I find it hard to say anything bad about the pursuit of education in general.
Now back to writing :)
The Abramson consulting phenomenon is just an elaboration of the institutionalization of writing that's been growing since the 1920's (there was a playwriting class at Yale in the mid-1920's).
Ron's correct about the money making aspect of writing departments for colleges--that was the argument for having them, and there has always been an understandable tension between the straight academic English departments, and the "creative" faculty which taught "performance." (That was true in art departments, too, though the art historians didn't feel as threatened as the English professors.)
Your argument seems to be that from a purely business stand-point, Seth's exploitation of a client base is just good sense. But this doesn't eliminate the crucial issue: Can art, and the talent which it requires, be codified into a course? Is there a syllabus for innovation, for the creative act?
I'd argue that there isn't. Each generation has its own ideas about what matters, what's necessary, or interesting.
Workshops are like encounter groups. You submit a part of yourself--hopefully a very personal and important part--and let others dissect it and criticize it. But, unlike the psychiatric paradigm, there is no "healthy" model; there are no "right ways" to write a poem.
If there is a "right way" to apply for graduate school, it doesn't necessarily follow that there is a "right way" to write a poem. If the point of applying to an MFA program is to "get along" professionally, then the writing (or art) isn't the point, and that's where the equation falls apart.
There's a presumption behind Abramson's endeavor: He's "succeeded" by having gotten through an MFA program "successfully" himself, and the proof is his book contract, and his next academic appointment. But these worldly accomplishments prove nothing, especially if his "success" is based, even if only in part, on the systematic promotion built into the process. Because there is no "official" way of measuring what is, in fact, an aesthetic phenomenon.
If MFA-ing is like a franchise, then the same rules we apply to any growth industry must apply here too. Does MacDonald's make better burgers than Wendy's? Or can it produce them more cheaply, and with better advertising?
Will Abramson have a team of readers busily churning out "prospects" and "most likely to suceeds"? Then we could have two, or three, or five consulting firms, all vying for the MFA application market. Seminars and tests. Ambitious parents would be encouraged to have "advanced placement" coaching and tutoring, in order to "improve" their kids' chances at becoming successful BEFORE they even graduated from high school.
How about creative writing classes for high school sophomores? I remember my 6th grade teacher got very upset when the poem I turned in (in 1958) turned out to be original (and not plagiarized, as she assumed I had done). How much faster (and further) might I have progressed, had I not been distracted by critical writing in college? I should have been practicing writing sonnets, instead of deconstructing Conrad and Yeats!
When I first heard about this, I thought it was a put-on, a joke. Now that I know it's supposed to be serious, I'm still laughing.
Ron's correct about the money making aspect of writing departments for colleges--that was the argument for having them, and there has always been an understandable tension between the straight academic English departments, and the "creative" faculty which taught "performance." (That was true in art departments, too, though the art historians didn't feel as threatened as the English professors.)
Your argument seems to be that from a purely business stand-point, Seth's exploitation of a client base is just good sense. But this doesn't eliminate the crucial issue: Can art, and the talent which it requires, be codified into a course? Is there a syllabus for innovation, for the creative act?
I'd argue that there isn't. Each generation has its own ideas about what matters, what's necessary, or interesting.
Workshops are like encounter groups. You submit a part of yourself--hopefully a very personal and important part--and let others dissect it and criticize it. But, unlike the psychiatric paradigm, there is no "healthy" model; there are no "right ways" to write a poem.
If there is a "right way" to apply for graduate school, it doesn't necessarily follow that there is a "right way" to write a poem. If the point of applying to an MFA program is to "get along" professionally, then the writing (or art) isn't the point, and that's where the equation falls apart.
There's a presumption behind Abramson's endeavor: He's "succeeded" by having gotten through an MFA program "successfully" himself, and the proof is his book contract, and his next academic appointment. But these worldly accomplishments prove nothing, especially if his "success" is based, even if only in part, on the systematic promotion built into the process. Because there is no "official" way of measuring what is, in fact, an aesthetic phenomenon.
If MFA-ing is like a franchise, then the same rules we apply to any growth industry must apply here too. Does MacDonald's make better burgers than Wendy's? Or can it produce them more cheaply, and with better advertising?
Will Abramson have a team of readers busily churning out "prospects" and "most likely to suceeds"? Then we could have two, or three, or five consulting firms, all vying for the MFA application market. Seminars and tests. Ambitious parents would be encouraged to have "advanced placement" coaching and tutoring, in order to "improve" their kids' chances at becoming successful BEFORE they even graduated from high school.
How about creative writing classes for high school sophomores? I remember my 6th grade teacher got very upset when the poem I turned in (in 1958) turned out to be original (and not plagiarized, as she assumed I had done). How much faster (and further) might I have progressed, had I not been distracted by critical writing in college? I should have been practicing writing sonnets, instead of deconstructing Conrad and Yeats!
When I first heard about this, I thought it was a put-on, a joke. Now that I know it's supposed to be serious, I'm still laughing.
Curtis,
I haven't met many poets who actually feel like successes, whatever they've (by some supposedly objective measure) accomplished. In any case, I have yet to tell a student of mine that poetry will make them happy or cause them to feel successful; I generally indicate the opposite, and tend to think of this as one more obstacle an individual faces in choosing whether or not to become a writer. Do I want to feel constant anxiety and self-doubt? is the question aspiring writers probably need to ask themselves. In that sense I agree with the quote Ron attributes to Jack Gilbert, albeit Jack Gilbert said those words at a time when virtually no MFA in the country was fully-funded; to say now, in this economy, that no one should attend or stay in a fully-funded MFA program would be reckless and outrageously out-of-touch, not only with what being in a vibrant, geographically-tight writing community can do for a young writer, but with fiscal realities. But this--"If they are going to be a writer, they’ll be a writer whether they’re here or not. But getting a degree won’t make them a writer, it won’t even make them a decent teacher of writers"--is basically true. That says nothing about whether a young writer would want to spend 1/7th of the cost of applying to MFA programs to perhaps make more likely attending an MFA that pays them to attend, rather than one which costs $125,000.
Your view of poetry and poets makes sense, Curtis, only if we assume poets don't wish to share their poetry with others, and so scarcity of resources will never be an issue for any poet or community of poets. The "private"/"diary" model of poetry-writing which has never, actually, been extant in the United States in any period. The reality is that, for instance, even a High Modernist (in inclination if not aesthetic) like Ron avidly publishes and promotes his own writings in the context of a book market with little room for poetry (as Ron's link-posts so often remind us). And yes, in the context of such a hostile environment for young writers I have always been amazed at the Modernist inclination to see how few poets this country can play host to; sometimes it feels, albeit far less grandly or troublingly, like a plantation owner trying to determine the smallest number of slaves needed to till a field. My point: it's terminally cynical and calculating because it focuses only on a personal rather than communal good. Not that the calculations are even feasible; every Modernist thinks there are too many poets, too many publishing houses, too many bad readers of poetry--and yet these are masses of persons which coincidentally never include themselves, their own books, or their own friends. Ron's citation of the "five-foot-bookshelf" model is fraudulent on two (seemingly contradictory) counts: one, because, as indicated by the self-preservation instinct of all poets, there is no actual process by which this model could be brought about except by default (it's a little like rich GOP parents who claim money isn't important to anyone's education--except their own kids; that view only succeeds because such folks ultimately vote against local, state, and federal educational funding, not because they convince anyone else to de-fund their own kids); second, because there's absolutely nothing about the "practice" model Ron describes which precludes the poetry community from continuing to honor extraordinary achievement (of/in any aesthetic, not merely what Ron calls SoQ).
I think it's a dim view of people which says that, in a world where everyone at least reads poetry--and many write it--the notion of "greatness" will die. Have we lost great cinema because of "Transformers 2"? Have we lost classical music because of Britney Spears? Did we lose Pollack because of MFA programs for painters? There's no precedent for more poets meaning less attention for great poets in the long term, and frankly even in the short-term it's worth noting that great indie cinema is currently more popular than poetry.
S.
I haven't met many poets who actually feel like successes, whatever they've (by some supposedly objective measure) accomplished. In any case, I have yet to tell a student of mine that poetry will make them happy or cause them to feel successful; I generally indicate the opposite, and tend to think of this as one more obstacle an individual faces in choosing whether or not to become a writer. Do I want to feel constant anxiety and self-doubt? is the question aspiring writers probably need to ask themselves. In that sense I agree with the quote Ron attributes to Jack Gilbert, albeit Jack Gilbert said those words at a time when virtually no MFA in the country was fully-funded; to say now, in this economy, that no one should attend or stay in a fully-funded MFA program would be reckless and outrageously out-of-touch, not only with what being in a vibrant, geographically-tight writing community can do for a young writer, but with fiscal realities. But this--"If they are going to be a writer, they’ll be a writer whether they’re here or not. But getting a degree won’t make them a writer, it won’t even make them a decent teacher of writers"--is basically true. That says nothing about whether a young writer would want to spend 1/7th of the cost of applying to MFA programs to perhaps make more likely attending an MFA that pays them to attend, rather than one which costs $125,000.
Your view of poetry and poets makes sense, Curtis, only if we assume poets don't wish to share their poetry with others, and so scarcity of resources will never be an issue for any poet or community of poets. The "private"/"diary" model of poetry-writing which has never, actually, been extant in the United States in any period. The reality is that, for instance, even a High Modernist (in inclination if not aesthetic) like Ron avidly publishes and promotes his own writings in the context of a book market with little room for poetry (as Ron's link-posts so often remind us). And yes, in the context of such a hostile environment for young writers I have always been amazed at the Modernist inclination to see how few poets this country can play host to; sometimes it feels, albeit far less grandly or troublingly, like a plantation owner trying to determine the smallest number of slaves needed to till a field. My point: it's terminally cynical and calculating because it focuses only on a personal rather than communal good. Not that the calculations are even feasible; every Modernist thinks there are too many poets, too many publishing houses, too many bad readers of poetry--and yet these are masses of persons which coincidentally never include themselves, their own books, or their own friends. Ron's citation of the "five-foot-bookshelf" model is fraudulent on two (seemingly contradictory) counts: one, because, as indicated by the self-preservation instinct of all poets, there is no actual process by which this model could be brought about except by default (it's a little like rich GOP parents who claim money isn't important to anyone's education--except their own kids; that view only succeeds because such folks ultimately vote against local, state, and federal educational funding, not because they convince anyone else to de-fund their own kids); second, because there's absolutely nothing about the "practice" model Ron describes which precludes the poetry community from continuing to honor extraordinary achievement (of/in any aesthetic, not merely what Ron calls SoQ).
I think it's a dim view of people which says that, in a world where everyone at least reads poetry--and many write it--the notion of "greatness" will die. Have we lost great cinema because of "Transformers 2"? Have we lost classical music because of Britney Spears? Did we lose Pollack because of MFA programs for painters? There's no precedent for more poets meaning less attention for great poets in the long term, and frankly even in the short-term it's worth noting that great indie cinema is currently more popular than poetry.
S.
I see a future convergence between MFA programs and Conceptual Flarf. This will involve something we will term "A-A" degrees, which refers to the certification awarded for literary-poetical-rhetorical training at the ADVANCED-ADVANCED level : that is, a level of writing which does not actually involve the pedestrian, laborious process of actually "writing" poetry, but rather to the algorithmic extrapolations & derived-mathematical overlays produced by digital software ON TOP of theoretically-existent texts (cf. string-theoretical physics for a more detailed explanation of these highly advanced & super-technical processes (pronounced "PROSSESSEEZ")).
I also see a future for robot brain theory ("blue brains", in the lingo) which might provide a streamlined ramification for the kind of advanced-technical support services currently being offered by Mr. Abramson & other practitioners of that ilk.
Poetry used to be about feelings. But feelings are produced by money, as has been shown recently by Professor Pinky of the Advanced-Advanced-Advanced-Theoretical Wing of New Moneymaker University. This changes everything, including literary diapers of every stripe.
I also see a future for robot brain theory ("blue brains", in the lingo) which might provide a streamlined ramification for the kind of advanced-technical support services currently being offered by Mr. Abramson & other practitioners of that ilk.
Poetry used to be about feelings. But feelings are produced by money, as has been shown recently by Professor Pinky of the Advanced-Advanced-Advanced-Theoretical Wing of New Moneymaker University. This changes everything, including literary diapers of every stripe.
I am a young (31 yrs) would-be writer in the process of applying for an MFA, and am considering using the ALC service at some point in the process.
First, I don't see anything strange about ALC. They offer a service. If it seems valuable to me (I haven't made up my mind yet), I will pay for it. If not, I won't. Yes, it's a straight-up consumer decision, a cost-benefit calculation.
Were I to pay, I don't feel under any illusions as to what I'd get for my money. I'd expect to get a decent evaluation (by which I mean thoughtful, thorough, and done in good faith, rather than necessarily positive) from someone who graduated the IWW. I don't see the service as providing a writer-buddy, or as my buying collaboration (I have my own, self-developed reading circle). I'd compare it to actor or musician friends of mine who might hire a coach or do a master class to prepare for a big audition. Such a service is very normal in those artistic fields, and doesn't seem to produce much angst. I don't feel that the marketing language on the ALC site proposes anything different.
To many of the comment-makers I'd say in general: Really? Do you really think we MFA applicants are all that starry-eyed about what we're getting into? Is going for your MFA not an endeavor like any other worldly endeavor, with both its glories and its meannesses, its petty aspects, its deceptions and compromises, and its potential heights of achievement and reward?
I love Silliman's discussion, however. It's wonderful and informative.
What's interesting to me about what Silliman said, and perhaps what moved me to comment, is that I myself felt and feel much anxiety about the potential to become institutionalized as a writer (a would-be writer?) by the MFA world.
I suppose my reply to Silliman is somewhat generic, but I say it sincerely: I decided to apply for an MFA (in fiction) mainly because I wanted the time to write. I had tried getting a part-time job in order to do this, and found that pursuit so bothersome that I said, why not just get an MFA? A close second reason to this was that I recognized that the best way I could improve my technique was through having my work read and discussed, and that a program with writers whose work I liked and respected would likely offer a good venue for this. An important secondary factor was a confidence that grew through my late twenties regarding "what I wanted to write about." Rounding out my reasoning was the realization that I could pursue an MFA and emerge from the other side with less debt than I thought. I write how I write, but I live as a solid bourgeois. I'm not going to pimp out my girlfriend or deal heroin in Washington Square to support my writing life, so knowing I could swing the financial side of the degree was crucial (here I'm 100% with Seth's thinking on the importance of funding).
So, I'm going over to the Matrix mainly for practical reasons. However, there is a philosophical element to it. That is, since I am going to perform an action in the world, I am going to use the means I have at my given place and time in history, rather than waiting for some other, better means to come along. I live in early 2000s America; America offers me the MFA program as a means to write; I consciously accept the proposition and acknowledge myself as within its power structure.
Finally, while I may not like or endorse this power structure, I perceive that it interrelates to other, larger power structures (of which I am always already a part) that have far more pernicious effects on me and my fellow beings, and I decide that these greater power structures deserve more of my attention. On its own, the University seems a rather meager target.
First, I don't see anything strange about ALC. They offer a service. If it seems valuable to me (I haven't made up my mind yet), I will pay for it. If not, I won't. Yes, it's a straight-up consumer decision, a cost-benefit calculation.
Were I to pay, I don't feel under any illusions as to what I'd get for my money. I'd expect to get a decent evaluation (by which I mean thoughtful, thorough, and done in good faith, rather than necessarily positive) from someone who graduated the IWW. I don't see the service as providing a writer-buddy, or as my buying collaboration (I have my own, self-developed reading circle). I'd compare it to actor or musician friends of mine who might hire a coach or do a master class to prepare for a big audition. Such a service is very normal in those artistic fields, and doesn't seem to produce much angst. I don't feel that the marketing language on the ALC site proposes anything different.
To many of the comment-makers I'd say in general: Really? Do you really think we MFA applicants are all that starry-eyed about what we're getting into? Is going for your MFA not an endeavor like any other worldly endeavor, with both its glories and its meannesses, its petty aspects, its deceptions and compromises, and its potential heights of achievement and reward?
I love Silliman's discussion, however. It's wonderful and informative.
What's interesting to me about what Silliman said, and perhaps what moved me to comment, is that I myself felt and feel much anxiety about the potential to become institutionalized as a writer (a would-be writer?) by the MFA world.
I suppose my reply to Silliman is somewhat generic, but I say it sincerely: I decided to apply for an MFA (in fiction) mainly because I wanted the time to write. I had tried getting a part-time job in order to do this, and found that pursuit so bothersome that I said, why not just get an MFA? A close second reason to this was that I recognized that the best way I could improve my technique was through having my work read and discussed, and that a program with writers whose work I liked and respected would likely offer a good venue for this. An important secondary factor was a confidence that grew through my late twenties regarding "what I wanted to write about." Rounding out my reasoning was the realization that I could pursue an MFA and emerge from the other side with less debt than I thought. I write how I write, but I live as a solid bourgeois. I'm not going to pimp out my girlfriend or deal heroin in Washington Square to support my writing life, so knowing I could swing the financial side of the degree was crucial (here I'm 100% with Seth's thinking on the importance of funding).
So, I'm going over to the Matrix mainly for practical reasons. However, there is a philosophical element to it. That is, since I am going to perform an action in the world, I am going to use the means I have at my given place and time in history, rather than waiting for some other, better means to come along. I live in early 2000s America; America offers me the MFA program as a means to write; I consciously accept the proposition and acknowledge myself as within its power structure.
Finally, while I may not like or endorse this power structure, I perceive that it interrelates to other, larger power structures (of which I am always already a part) that have far more pernicious effects on me and my fellow beings, and I decide that these greater power structures deserve more of my attention. On its own, the University seems a rather meager target.
I didn't go to an MFA program of course, but did attend a lecture by Gordon Lish. His lectures were in NYC, and attended by people paying a lot of money to get a book from Knopf (Lish edited at Knopf). I was amazed at the limousines pulling up, and the huge variety of people. After the lecture, which went for six hours, and was something like one of Choygam Trungpa's talks at Naropa (very cultish following, but quite intelligent information in its own way), I stayed at some guy's house (I had missed the bus). He had a set of dumbbells in the apartment, and was working walking a dog in NYC for a super-rich woman, which presumably left all his time open for writing.
But this was fiction, not poetry.
There are a lot of people who want the five-foot shelf. It's like a mausoleum, I guess, or a pyramid.
Or a pyramid scheme.
I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. She was Truman Capote's friend, and he helped her get funding to write it, and then helped her publish it, and so on. Maybe famous writers should get paid by people who want to be their friends. It would save a lot of time. Harper Lee never went into any creative writing classes, and her fictive other throughout the book is always arguing against attending school.
But this was fiction, not poetry.
There are a lot of people who want the five-foot shelf. It's like a mausoleum, I guess, or a pyramid.
Or a pyramid scheme.
I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. She was Truman Capote's friend, and he helped her get funding to write it, and then helped her publish it, and so on. Maybe famous writers should get paid by people who want to be their friends. It would save a lot of time. Harper Lee never went into any creative writing classes, and her fictive other throughout the book is always arguing against attending school.
Seth: Thank-you for your considered reply, which my disrespectful one didn't deserve.
But I'd like to respond, in large measure because I think almost everything you say here is arguably true on a certain level, even if I wish it weren't!
It seems possible, then, to divide the phenomenon of "workshops" into two separate categories: One would include the "amateur" instances of people just getting together and reading to each other, either poems they like, or their own efforts. This would also include the "poetry in the schools" programs (a la Koch) and some of the amateur literary blogging that is part of the present scene. No one would object to the spirit or purpose of these kinds of activity, but using them as examples to defend the (Other) more serious academic (careerist) for-profit activity seems wrong to me--they're not identical, not simply variant instances of "poetasting".
I feel that Gilbert's quote is even more true today than when he said it; i.e., it is aimed squarely at the workshop presumption, which has grown steadily since then. I think his position derives from a conviction that second rate writing ISN'T worth reading, in fact is a kind of lie, or diversion from what life presents--that the writing gift isn't, at any given time, a common commodity, and that we should value it to that degree, and show the proper respect by demanding better of ourselves, and everyone else. There may be an exclusivity about that which flies in the face of your implied democratization of art/writing, but I don't see an alternative: People who dream of writing--and there are always many more of these than serious writers--may mimic the real thing (i.e., Jorie Graham) but can never claim honestly to have achieved it. (That includes me, by the way.)
On the one hand, we can acknowledge a broad audience among the general population for poetasting, but 96% of the object of this (at the least!) is comprised of Rumi, Frost, Collins, the Little Portuguese, Ogden Nash and Eddie Guest. On the other, we have a deluded "avant-garde" churning out turgid and prolix monuments which less than .001% of the population even pretends to comprehend, much less actually read with pleasure. In the middle, are the workshops and the committed, earnest journeymen who publish with Copper Canyon, the university presses--not quite good enough to earn prizes (for the most part), but well-meaning middle class folks who split their garbage into six bins and vote Democratic. God love'em, but they don't quite aspire to the best. They don't like Chaucer, they don't like Donne or Pound or Zukofsky or Hopkins (too tough). They're reasonable people who weigh the merits and choose carefully.
End Part I
But I'd like to respond, in large measure because I think almost everything you say here is arguably true on a certain level, even if I wish it weren't!
It seems possible, then, to divide the phenomenon of "workshops" into two separate categories: One would include the "amateur" instances of people just getting together and reading to each other, either poems they like, or their own efforts. This would also include the "poetry in the schools" programs (a la Koch) and some of the amateur literary blogging that is part of the present scene. No one would object to the spirit or purpose of these kinds of activity, but using them as examples to defend the (Other) more serious academic (careerist) for-profit activity seems wrong to me--they're not identical, not simply variant instances of "poetasting".
I feel that Gilbert's quote is even more true today than when he said it; i.e., it is aimed squarely at the workshop presumption, which has grown steadily since then. I think his position derives from a conviction that second rate writing ISN'T worth reading, in fact is a kind of lie, or diversion from what life presents--that the writing gift isn't, at any given time, a common commodity, and that we should value it to that degree, and show the proper respect by demanding better of ourselves, and everyone else. There may be an exclusivity about that which flies in the face of your implied democratization of art/writing, but I don't see an alternative: People who dream of writing--and there are always many more of these than serious writers--may mimic the real thing (i.e., Jorie Graham) but can never claim honestly to have achieved it. (That includes me, by the way.)
On the one hand, we can acknowledge a broad audience among the general population for poetasting, but 96% of the object of this (at the least!) is comprised of Rumi, Frost, Collins, the Little Portuguese, Ogden Nash and Eddie Guest. On the other, we have a deluded "avant-garde" churning out turgid and prolix monuments which less than .001% of the population even pretends to comprehend, much less actually read with pleasure. In the middle, are the workshops and the committed, earnest journeymen who publish with Copper Canyon, the university presses--not quite good enough to earn prizes (for the most part), but well-meaning middle class folks who split their garbage into six bins and vote Democratic. God love'em, but they don't quite aspire to the best. They don't like Chaucer, they don't like Donne or Pound or Zukofsky or Hopkins (too tough). They're reasonable people who weigh the merits and choose carefully.
End Part I
Part II -
"Greatness" isn't under assault, as you assume I might think. It's sad, though, to think that so many young undergraduates harbor fantasies of becoming Galway Kinnells or Sharon Oldses. Or even Jorie Grahamses!
What bothers me is this sort of "culture" of academic workshopping, self-perpetuating, and self-justifying. Isn't it just as likely that a "born" poet would do just as well (or better) not having had to submit to the general leveling and homogenizing effects of group-think which educational institutions, for better or worse, tend to encourage?
There's no arguing that mediocre poets can improve their work up to a mediocre standard simply by showing each other how to heighten effects, and organize and prioritize their writing. But this process, by definition, can't foster innovative inquiry and exploration; because what's taught belongs to the past, to notions of how to conduct a "class" and "get people involved" and "taking themselves more seriously" etc. None of this has anything to do with the genius of composition.
Nothing any of the Beats or Black Mountain or New York School produced came out of "workshops" or responsible academic programs. All that material had to wait almost two full generations to be "discovered" and acknowledged and adopted as models by the "academy" of which you think yourself a part, and which your consulting firm is designed to foster. The sad fact is that people today "discover" Berrigan's Sonnets, but it was published 45 years ago! Workshop programs are always at least a generation BEHIND whatever interesting is happening.
So, if you value innovation and new ideas, workshops aren't where you will want to be. If you want to get ahead, test your ability to write and give yourself three years of opportunity, and maybe (though unlikely) teach or publish successfully in the field, it may be useful. Can a workshop "ruin" a good writer, or maybe slow him down for a while?--possibly. I guess what really bothers me is the growing army of middle-class, sensible, though slightly dull-witted and well-meaning poetasters who think Kooser and Bukowski and Olds are just magnificent writers. A pox on them!
"Greatness" isn't under assault, as you assume I might think. It's sad, though, to think that so many young undergraduates harbor fantasies of becoming Galway Kinnells or Sharon Oldses. Or even Jorie Grahamses!
What bothers me is this sort of "culture" of academic workshopping, self-perpetuating, and self-justifying. Isn't it just as likely that a "born" poet would do just as well (or better) not having had to submit to the general leveling and homogenizing effects of group-think which educational institutions, for better or worse, tend to encourage?
There's no arguing that mediocre poets can improve their work up to a mediocre standard simply by showing each other how to heighten effects, and organize and prioritize their writing. But this process, by definition, can't foster innovative inquiry and exploration; because what's taught belongs to the past, to notions of how to conduct a "class" and "get people involved" and "taking themselves more seriously" etc. None of this has anything to do with the genius of composition.
Nothing any of the Beats or Black Mountain or New York School produced came out of "workshops" or responsible academic programs. All that material had to wait almost two full generations to be "discovered" and acknowledged and adopted as models by the "academy" of which you think yourself a part, and which your consulting firm is designed to foster. The sad fact is that people today "discover" Berrigan's Sonnets, but it was published 45 years ago! Workshop programs are always at least a generation BEHIND whatever interesting is happening.
So, if you value innovation and new ideas, workshops aren't where you will want to be. If you want to get ahead, test your ability to write and give yourself three years of opportunity, and maybe (though unlikely) teach or publish successfully in the field, it may be useful. Can a workshop "ruin" a good writer, or maybe slow him down for a while?--possibly. I guess what really bothers me is the growing army of middle-class, sensible, though slightly dull-witted and well-meaning poetasters who think Kooser and Bukowski and Olds are just magnificent writers. A pox on them!
Curtis,
As you know, I'm all for encouraging a workshop model which mimics those sociological structures we all respect: like the salons and peer-groups which helped create Beat and NYS poetry and so on. It's important to remember that many go to MFA programs for precisely this, because they don't have the money to go to NYC and become a Bohemian--and there aren't many other places where salons and peer-groups of the sort, say, Ashbery had can be found/created. So yes, the workshop model must adapt to become closer to the salon model, or the Black Mountain model, or even the coffeeshop model. But let's not kid ourselves: the NYS poets, for instance, were serious writers who took the feedback of their friends seriously. So the end of the workshop will not be the end of people giving and receiving feedback and taking it to heart.
As to Greatness, keep in mind that everyone comes to poetry for a different reason--as one poet once wisely told me, some people want nothing more than to hear/see their own world reflected back at them in beautiful language--and so once a writer crosses the line of competence in craft (in making evaluations of other writers, I mean) you are, unfortunately, going to have people who call Sharon Olds Great, and Mary Oliver Great, and Billy Collins Great.
But the odd thing, I think, is that it is MFA programs--more than anywhere else (outside a NYC-centric Ashbery-Koch-O'Hara-like cabal, which secretly all of us wish for on some level) which can do the difficult work of disabusing young writers from the sort of limited worldview which makes it a fait accompli that Olds will be considered Great. MFA grads are far more likely to be better read, for their age-group, than non-MFAs of the same age, largely because they have someone assisting them in finding poetry they're really going to dig. I don't think we give enough credit to the possibility--the reality--that most poetasters do not end up in the post-avant, but in Mattie Stepanek territory. Can't MFAs give young writers at least a chance to see the whole landscape of poetry before they decide what vision of poetry, and Greatness, is the one (if any) they'll pursue?
As you know, I'm all for encouraging a workshop model which mimics those sociological structures we all respect: like the salons and peer-groups which helped create Beat and NYS poetry and so on. It's important to remember that many go to MFA programs for precisely this, because they don't have the money to go to NYC and become a Bohemian--and there aren't many other places where salons and peer-groups of the sort, say, Ashbery had can be found/created. So yes, the workshop model must adapt to become closer to the salon model, or the Black Mountain model, or even the coffeeshop model. But let's not kid ourselves: the NYS poets, for instance, were serious writers who took the feedback of their friends seriously. So the end of the workshop will not be the end of people giving and receiving feedback and taking it to heart.
As to Greatness, keep in mind that everyone comes to poetry for a different reason--as one poet once wisely told me, some people want nothing more than to hear/see their own world reflected back at them in beautiful language--and so once a writer crosses the line of competence in craft (in making evaluations of other writers, I mean) you are, unfortunately, going to have people who call Sharon Olds Great, and Mary Oliver Great, and Billy Collins Great.
But the odd thing, I think, is that it is MFA programs--more than anywhere else (outside a NYC-centric Ashbery-Koch-O'Hara-like cabal, which secretly all of us wish for on some level) which can do the difficult work of disabusing young writers from the sort of limited worldview which makes it a fait accompli that Olds will be considered Great. MFA grads are far more likely to be better read, for their age-group, than non-MFAs of the same age, largely because they have someone assisting them in finding poetry they're really going to dig. I don't think we give enough credit to the possibility--the reality--that most poetasters do not end up in the post-avant, but in Mattie Stepanek territory. Can't MFAs give young writers at least a chance to see the whole landscape of poetry before they decide what vision of poetry, and Greatness, is the one (if any) they'll pursue?
What percentage of people entering law school are called to the bar? Or find the job of their dreams?
What percentage of people entering art school become Jasper Johns or Agnes Martin?
I agree, Ron, that poetry is practice, and there are infinite ways of approaching that practice.
As for Seth's business, the problem I have with commentators is the assumption that everyone has access to the same information.
You might not need Seth's services if you live in New York, or Chicago or Boston, or if both of your parents have attended grad schools and can hook you up with Charles Bernstein or Jorie Graham but that is NOT most people's reality...
What percentage of people entering art school become Jasper Johns or Agnes Martin?
I agree, Ron, that poetry is practice, and there are infinite ways of approaching that practice.
As for Seth's business, the problem I have with commentators is the assumption that everyone has access to the same information.
You might not need Seth's services if you live in New York, or Chicago or Boston, or if both of your parents have attended grad schools and can hook you up with Charles Bernstein or Jorie Graham but that is NOT most people's reality...
Without much an opinion on the valuation of ALC (beyond noting that the defenses offered inevitably amount to analogies, a sort of "everybody's doing it" excuse which shouldn't pass so easily), I do wish Ron, in his million syllables per given topic, could at least get close on actual history.
It's true that the education-finding boom ended around 1973, though it was an uneven and far less punctual decline. It had all but nothing to do with the end of the draft, except in the way that these facts were part of a similar complex — both effects, more accurately, of a root issue
The root issue is the decline in rates of profit. The years 1948-73 are exactly the "long boom" of the postwar era; real wages begin to stagnate around 1965, expansion shortly thereafter. The beginning of education cuts begins here and continues (as Californians, and anyone looking at the current situation) should be well-aware: Prop 13 in 1978 is the state's own response to this ongoing crisis of profitability (and thus revenues) in the industrial sector.
There are a dozen swell books about this, though Robert Brenner's The Economics of Global Turbulence remains the classic.
It's terrific that ALC has at least the virtue of an occasion to think about the history of writing programs, education, and etc. Can we get the basics right?
It's true that the education-finding boom ended around 1973, though it was an uneven and far less punctual decline. It had all but nothing to do with the end of the draft, except in the way that these facts were part of a similar complex — both effects, more accurately, of a root issue
The root issue is the decline in rates of profit. The years 1948-73 are exactly the "long boom" of the postwar era; real wages begin to stagnate around 1965, expansion shortly thereafter. The beginning of education cuts begins here and continues (as Californians, and anyone looking at the current situation) should be well-aware: Prop 13 in 1978 is the state's own response to this ongoing crisis of profitability (and thus revenues) in the industrial sector.
There are a dozen swell books about this, though Robert Brenner's The Economics of Global Turbulence remains the classic.
It's terrific that ALC has at least the virtue of an occasion to think about the history of writing programs, education, and etc. Can we get the basics right?
Jessie Carty said...
“…but I will say that I like this idea of equating the writing of poetry to the act of meditation."
Speaking as one who mostly writes poetry of a philosophical and contemplative nature, I would say that READING a poem is more like meditation. Writing a poem is like an epiphany, ecstasy, euphoria, bliss, a divine intoxication.
“…but I will say that I like this idea of equating the writing of poetry to the act of meditation."
Speaking as one who mostly writes poetry of a philosophical and contemplative nature, I would say that READING a poem is more like meditation. Writing a poem is like an epiphany, ecstasy, euphoria, bliss, a divine intoxication.
this is a serious question and i know many won't take it seriously though:
isn't it just uncool though?
i mean it
isn't it just uncool though?
i mean it
Cheese, Ry,
It depends on what you mean by "it":
- Being a public defender?
- A consulting service
- Being a poet
- a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
It depends on what you mean by "it":
- Being a public defender?
- A consulting service
- Being a poet
- a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
public defender is ok
poet is either/or
consultant... ehh
like professionalism and vocationalism are fine- but abramson's response to mfa saturation. seriously, sure its practical in a sense but what the heck? these types of moves only, i fear, widen the gap between "outsider" and "insider" art. i don't think that is good. see the monopolies of the british art scene. there are alot of kinds of yoga and meditation too... there is the soccermom kind and the naked himalayan guy kind. whatever...
seth is a capitalist. the amount of capital is not an issue. somebody will come and start throwing the money-changers out though. any response to this statement i anticipate. there are alot of kinds of cheese too ron, ameriocan velveeta or the kind from the belgian cellar.
poet is either/or
consultant... ehh
like professionalism and vocationalism are fine- but abramson's response to mfa saturation. seriously, sure its practical in a sense but what the heck? these types of moves only, i fear, widen the gap between "outsider" and "insider" art. i don't think that is good. see the monopolies of the british art scene. there are alot of kinds of yoga and meditation too... there is the soccermom kind and the naked himalayan guy kind. whatever...
seth is a capitalist. the amount of capital is not an issue. somebody will come and start throwing the money-changers out though. any response to this statement i anticipate. there are alot of kinds of cheese too ron, ameriocan velveeta or the kind from the belgian cellar.
well, jane, given the broad context of an increasingly corporate, "belt-tightening", management-dominated university, what about the fact that the rapid growth of the MFA population is taking place alongside an increase in the percentage of college and university classes taught by part-time/adjunct instructors?
mfa students are perfect comp 101 teachers--I've heard it myself! how convenient! and they can keep teaching comp, even after they graduate!......
mfa students are perfect comp 101 teachers--I've heard it myself! how convenient! and they can keep teaching comp, even after they graduate!......
To those like Jamie who are currently applying to schools and considering paying for consulting services for portfolio commentary, I urge you not to undervalue the (free) commentary given by your peers and teachers in favor of paid commentary by others. One of the most valuable lessons I learned through both the process of applying to MFA programs and through my two years as an MFA at the University of Florida (both as a teacher and in workshop) was the importance of being a filter, not a sponge, when it comes to criticism and critique. There are some undoubtedly talented writers who might be absolutely qualified to comment on the writing of others but absolutely unqualified to comment on yours. Past a basic level of ability in mechanics, taste is so incredibly subjective and varied that two equally qualified, equally educated and intelligent writers could easily give completely disparate advice. I saw this happen again and again as I applied--of the three professors, one MFA, and several of my undergraduate writing peers who gave my portfolio a look, each selected completely different poems and ordered them in their own way. Of the professors I worked with at UF, each had totally different advice, often on the same poem. Ditto for my peers.
I found that it's best, overall, to trust your instincts regarding both your own work and the advice of others. I often found that those more familiar with my writing and style gave better, more useful advice--advice that I found more satisfactory and helpful. I also found that the people who give you the best feedback are often not those who you would initially suspect--the writer whose writing you most admire might give you terrible advice, unhelpful advice, advice that kills your poems. These days, my writing group is made up of fiction writers I met during my MFA experience, not poets, and despite the apparent genre disparity I find them to be perfect critical commentators on my work.
Many of my objections to the concept of MFA consulting are based on financial concerns--an MFA is not a cash cow, and even in well-funded programs, you'll be pretty for the next several years; I think it's best to save as much money as you can during the application process, because you'll frankly need it during your tenure as a graduate student. But these objections are doubly applicable if you already have a writing cohort that gives you useful, helpful, and instructive critique--if you already have people whose advice on your writing you trust and already find helpful, that's much more valuable than the advice of any stranger, however apparently qualified. Because, really, there's no better proof of qualification to comment on your writing than a proven track record.
I found that it's best, overall, to trust your instincts regarding both your own work and the advice of others. I often found that those more familiar with my writing and style gave better, more useful advice--advice that I found more satisfactory and helpful. I also found that the people who give you the best feedback are often not those who you would initially suspect--the writer whose writing you most admire might give you terrible advice, unhelpful advice, advice that kills your poems. These days, my writing group is made up of fiction writers I met during my MFA experience, not poets, and despite the apparent genre disparity I find them to be perfect critical commentators on my work.
Many of my objections to the concept of MFA consulting are based on financial concerns--an MFA is not a cash cow, and even in well-funded programs, you'll be pretty for the next several years; I think it's best to save as much money as you can during the application process, because you'll frankly need it during your tenure as a graduate student. But these objections are doubly applicable if you already have a writing cohort that gives you useful, helpful, and instructive critique--if you already have people whose advice on your writing you trust and already find helpful, that's much more valuable than the advice of any stranger, however apparently qualified. Because, really, there's no better proof of qualification to comment on your writing than a proven track record.
Pretty poor, that is. Though poets are a pretty lot, there's no guarantee that you will be pretty during your tenure as an MFA.
The ethos of literary education will change when the general social concept of what a poet is and does - the poet's role - changes.
The direction I would like to see it change is AWAY from :
a) sophisticated craftsperson
b) disillusioned arty critical-thinking rebel
c) musician/painter/comedian/actor
d) memoirist/fabulist
- and TOWARD :
companion, friend, camerado/a, fellow life-traveler, witness, wise & experienced fellow-sufferer. A Whitmanesque concept; but latent/visible in many many other poets (Chaucer...)
When the ETHOS of the poet is the unifying dimension of all the various technical elements of craft, then all the various formal educational programs & disciplines will actually re-order the teaching of reading & writing & history & literature & philoosophy & theology & science etc.
"Writing programs" will involve the student in the ethos, rather than the craft, of writing : because the craft part will be finished by 5th grade.
The direction I would like to see it change is AWAY from :
a) sophisticated craftsperson
b) disillusioned arty critical-thinking rebel
c) musician/painter/comedian/actor
d) memoirist/fabulist
- and TOWARD :
companion, friend, camerado/a, fellow life-traveler, witness, wise & experienced fellow-sufferer. A Whitmanesque concept; but latent/visible in many many other poets (Chaucer...)
When the ETHOS of the poet is the unifying dimension of all the various technical elements of craft, then all the various formal educational programs & disciplines will actually re-order the teaching of reading & writing & history & literature & philoosophy & theology & science etc.
"Writing programs" will involve the student in the ethos, rather than the craft, of writing : because the craft part will be finished by 5th grade.
p.s. think, for example, of the many very great "engaged" poets of the last century : Montale, Char, Akhmatova... these are just a few...
the ethos of these writers - the way they conceived the poetic vocation in relation to its technical aspects - seems jarringly different from reigning notions here in the USA - where poetry is either a teachable "craft" and an academic pursuit, or an offshoot of "avant-gardism" as an ideology & way of life...
the ethos of these writers - the way they conceived the poetic vocation in relation to its technical aspects - seems jarringly different from reigning notions here in the USA - where poetry is either a teachable "craft" and an academic pursuit, or an offshoot of "avant-gardism" as an ideology & way of life...
p.p.s. I've refined & summarized my comments over here :
http://theplumblineschool.blogspot.com/2009/08/dog-days-bark.html
http://theplumblineschool.blogspot.com/2009/08/dog-days-bark.html
Nick: but exactly. That "increasingly corporate, "belt-tightening", management-dominated university" and "increase in the percentage of college and university classes taught by part-time/adjunct instructors" is exactly the structure of the post-boom economy: post-Fordism, flexible accumulation, neoliberalism in general. It is characterized by increased informatics (command and control structures), austerity programs imposed from above, an increasing effort to monetize "services," and a casualization/flexiblization of the labor force — and is a series of specific responses to the collapse of the industrial/Fordist model around 1973, attempting to restore profitability. Including, obvs, the struggle to break union power by decreasing permanent work force.
The MFA rises within this context in no small part, as you note, because it both uses non-permanent labor (that vast circuit of visiting instructors) and produces a vast army of non-permanent labor for the university...and all of that at a profit. (So you see what I mean about explaining this via "the draft.")
These are probably pretty useful contexts to think about ALC, and what part of that historical structure it might fit into.
The MFA rises within this context in no small part, as you note, because it both uses non-permanent labor (that vast circuit of visiting instructors) and produces a vast army of non-permanent labor for the university...and all of that at a profit. (So you see what I mean about explaining this via "the draft.")
These are probably pretty useful contexts to think about ALC, and what part of that historical structure it might fit into.
Phoebe - thanks for the general advice. I agree that one's own cohort of self-developed readers is the irreplaceable thing - I anticipate developing mine over years, inside and outside of any potential MFA, based on the most subjective encounters/factors.
I'd clarify that my consideration of ALC is based solely on the notion of getting an "emergent" opinion on my work, outside my current group of readers. IE, its longterm value to me as a fiction writer will likely be limited, though it could have some value there. Its value to me as someone polishing a portfolio is probably greater and more to the point, if only on points of order, presentation, and the arcana that an MFA grad is more likely (though not guaranteed) to know. Whether such an investment is just a security blanket for the process or actually worthwhile I have yet to determine.
To the general discussion (which I'm really enjoying), I'd like to add that I feel myself and those around me take economic critiques of the system such as Jane's as our given circumstances. I go into my MFA application knowing the scarcity of teaching jobs, the insane competition for them, the plight of adjuncts. I can't say I expect good odds for a decent teaching job when I get out (though I may have creative reasons for not wanting such a job even if offered me on a platter - that's to be tested by me). Same for the "management-based University" - I take it for granted.
I think, however, that the people who I know approach the issue differently. Maybe it's just who I know, but my feeling is that my friends and I take a more transactional approach. Speaking in very broad terms, I think this comes from a skepticism we have developed from watching the 1960s - I mean mainly the generational ethos - play out through our own growing up (aesthetically, sexually, politically, economically, etc.). I think we both celebrate and emulate the "smash the corrupt system, build a new one" revolutionary ethos, and yet have a sneaking suspicion at the way this ethos has related to and become entangled with the corporate/media/capital/power landscape we find ourselves washed up upon. That binary pair, corporate assimilation and the disgusted desire to avoid or negate it, seem to us strange yet constant bedfellows. The University is no exception.
Some of the critiques laid out here - again, in my very broad terms - provoke that generational suspicion: "MFA programs just homogenize style," "writers have become creatively corrupted through professionalization," "to become a 'portfolio consultant' is to sacrifice one's genius to the system," and so on (my gross characterizations) seem laden with that old radical zeal - we'll suss out the entire rotten framework, then either tear it down or retire to our haven.
For us, the "transactional," I think we tend to not rule out as much. We recognize ourselves as already economically atomized and having to act out of a market-based self interest. Yet among those I know there is a definite acknowledgment of this condition, and an accompanying desire to find alternatives. I don't see the old "get thee out Satan!" vehemence - simply isolating ourselves from the nastiness won't fix it. Instead, we approach the task from an interest in hybridity, recombinance, trying multiple possibilities at once and seeing what evolves.
Quite a little ramble (and perhaps in the voice of one already damned), but the point is, it's out of such a mentality that I still don't find Seth's ALC venture strange at all (though I don't know if I'd be such a consultant, were I qualified), and that it fits into this idea of oneself as moving through the corrupting structures of one's time (perhaps to hijack, scavenge, or remix), rather than disavowing them wholesale to retain a notional purity. I also think the potential implications for publishing/the means of production are even more important than for education, and that poetics (as far as my limited knowledge lets me use the word) will be bound up with both.
I'd clarify that my consideration of ALC is based solely on the notion of getting an "emergent" opinion on my work, outside my current group of readers. IE, its longterm value to me as a fiction writer will likely be limited, though it could have some value there. Its value to me as someone polishing a portfolio is probably greater and more to the point, if only on points of order, presentation, and the arcana that an MFA grad is more likely (though not guaranteed) to know. Whether such an investment is just a security blanket for the process or actually worthwhile I have yet to determine.
To the general discussion (which I'm really enjoying), I'd like to add that I feel myself and those around me take economic critiques of the system such as Jane's as our given circumstances. I go into my MFA application knowing the scarcity of teaching jobs, the insane competition for them, the plight of adjuncts. I can't say I expect good odds for a decent teaching job when I get out (though I may have creative reasons for not wanting such a job even if offered me on a platter - that's to be tested by me). Same for the "management-based University" - I take it for granted.
I think, however, that the people who I know approach the issue differently. Maybe it's just who I know, but my feeling is that my friends and I take a more transactional approach. Speaking in very broad terms, I think this comes from a skepticism we have developed from watching the 1960s - I mean mainly the generational ethos - play out through our own growing up (aesthetically, sexually, politically, economically, etc.). I think we both celebrate and emulate the "smash the corrupt system, build a new one" revolutionary ethos, and yet have a sneaking suspicion at the way this ethos has related to and become entangled with the corporate/media/capital/power landscape we find ourselves washed up upon. That binary pair, corporate assimilation and the disgusted desire to avoid or negate it, seem to us strange yet constant bedfellows. The University is no exception.
Some of the critiques laid out here - again, in my very broad terms - provoke that generational suspicion: "MFA programs just homogenize style," "writers have become creatively corrupted through professionalization," "to become a 'portfolio consultant' is to sacrifice one's genius to the system," and so on (my gross characterizations) seem laden with that old radical zeal - we'll suss out the entire rotten framework, then either tear it down or retire to our haven.
For us, the "transactional," I think we tend to not rule out as much. We recognize ourselves as already economically atomized and having to act out of a market-based self interest. Yet among those I know there is a definite acknowledgment of this condition, and an accompanying desire to find alternatives. I don't see the old "get thee out Satan!" vehemence - simply isolating ourselves from the nastiness won't fix it. Instead, we approach the task from an interest in hybridity, recombinance, trying multiple possibilities at once and seeing what evolves.
Quite a little ramble (and perhaps in the voice of one already damned), but the point is, it's out of such a mentality that I still don't find Seth's ALC venture strange at all (though I don't know if I'd be such a consultant, were I qualified), and that it fits into this idea of oneself as moving through the corrupting structures of one's time (perhaps to hijack, scavenge, or remix), rather than disavowing them wholesale to retain a notional purity. I also think the potential implications for publishing/the means of production are even more important than for education, and that poetics (as far as my limited knowledge lets me use the word) will be bound up with both.
"Jane"--
Yes, and then ALC becomes just another feature of the elaboration of the exploitation of a class of clients.
Public university and college education was essentially "free" until the 1980's, when the decline in percentage of real revenue to land-grant and community institutions began. When I attended Berkeley in the 1960's, I could pay for all my expenses (+ perks) for about $1500 a year. I graduated with an outstanding senior year loan of less than $2000, because I came from a very poor family. Today, 5- and 6-year baccalaureate degree programs can end up costing between $65,000-500,000. If you look at what most graduate degree programs might cost, is it any wonder that things like graduate candidate consulting firms spring up?
Is an MFA worth tens of thousands of dollars (of debt)?
As these MFA programs keep cranking out thousands of graduates, fewer and fewer of them will able to find paths to "relevant" participation, and will end up in "day jobs" and other fields. Maybe Abramson's future lies outside of literature altogether--he sounds like the perfect administrator, much as Paul Engle eventually became at Iowa.
Yes, and then ALC becomes just another feature of the elaboration of the exploitation of a class of clients.
Public university and college education was essentially "free" until the 1980's, when the decline in percentage of real revenue to land-grant and community institutions began. When I attended Berkeley in the 1960's, I could pay for all my expenses (+ perks) for about $1500 a year. I graduated with an outstanding senior year loan of less than $2000, because I came from a very poor family. Today, 5- and 6-year baccalaureate degree programs can end up costing between $65,000-500,000. If you look at what most graduate degree programs might cost, is it any wonder that things like graduate candidate consulting firms spring up?
Is an MFA worth tens of thousands of dollars (of debt)?
As these MFA programs keep cranking out thousands of graduates, fewer and fewer of them will able to find paths to "relevant" participation, and will end up in "day jobs" and other fields. Maybe Abramson's future lies outside of literature altogether--he sounds like the perfect administrator, much as Paul Engle eventually became at Iowa.
p.p.p.s. & now I've given you the correct link :
http://theplumblineschool.blogspot.com/2009/08/dog-days-bark.html
sorry, folks!
http://theplumblineschool.blogspot.com/2009/08/dog-days-bark.html
sorry, folks!
"Jane", Curtis, Jamie,
I can't speak for others, only myself, but I think you mistake my intentions--even if, I'm sure, I can't convince some of you (e.g. "Jane") that the present iteration my efforts have taken advances a broader agenda quite separate from the one you imagine.
Many people speak of progressive politics on blogs, and many more speak in an academic fashion of politics while decrying academia. I come out of the radical progressive tradition which says that you don't discuss hegemonic power structures, you fight them--and not with words, but actions. I'd wager one of the only communities more aggressively progressive in its thinking than the artistic community is the public defender community. We didn't make a habit of lecturing one another on capitalism because we spent every day fighting actual government agents in court. I'm not trying to make PDs out as superheros through some kind of persuasive argument (even if I have my own opinion of the heroism and nobility of the profession), rather to say that being a public defender is a reification and real-world enactment of some of the principles being discussed academically here.
My approach to MFA programs is a radical one, and I salute Ron for being among the first to see the larger picture that's emerging, however imperfectly and imprecisely. My aim is to--through actions, not words--force the capitalist establishment to provide financial support for the creation of an artist class in the U.S. (as well as an accompanying class of highly-sympathetic non-artists or casual artists), and to do so without handcuffing artists but rather by empowering them. Jamie has it exactly right: my generation doesn't merely protest, nor does it merely render academic important questions that once were the subject of protests, it acts. While there is no doubt--and I haven't been coy about--the fact that youngish writers helping young writers to pursue their passions can provide economic aid to youngish writers (while providing even-more-critical assistance to the young writers), I've also been equally transparent in saying that none of this (ALC, MFA rankings, my support for an expansion in the number of MFA programs) is the end-game. The end-game is to radically reconfigure the place of poetry in the world's most powerful economy without doing violence to the art. In some of the middle stages of this process, which will likely take about 25 more years, it will appear to some that the end-game is other than what it is or that the poetry community has reached a stable-state that is unacceptable. But it's an illusion. Things are happening, sociologically, which (as Ron says) are new things--as Jamie says, a sort of recombinance of facts on the ground--and the old discussions are as counter-productive as they are academic. I hope more folks will get on the train, but the train is moving on either way.
S.
I can't speak for others, only myself, but I think you mistake my intentions--even if, I'm sure, I can't convince some of you (e.g. "Jane") that the present iteration my efforts have taken advances a broader agenda quite separate from the one you imagine.
Many people speak of progressive politics on blogs, and many more speak in an academic fashion of politics while decrying academia. I come out of the radical progressive tradition which says that you don't discuss hegemonic power structures, you fight them--and not with words, but actions. I'd wager one of the only communities more aggressively progressive in its thinking than the artistic community is the public defender community. We didn't make a habit of lecturing one another on capitalism because we spent every day fighting actual government agents in court. I'm not trying to make PDs out as superheros through some kind of persuasive argument (even if I have my own opinion of the heroism and nobility of the profession), rather to say that being a public defender is a reification and real-world enactment of some of the principles being discussed academically here.
My approach to MFA programs is a radical one, and I salute Ron for being among the first to see the larger picture that's emerging, however imperfectly and imprecisely. My aim is to--through actions, not words--force the capitalist establishment to provide financial support for the creation of an artist class in the U.S. (as well as an accompanying class of highly-sympathetic non-artists or casual artists), and to do so without handcuffing artists but rather by empowering them. Jamie has it exactly right: my generation doesn't merely protest, nor does it merely render academic important questions that once were the subject of protests, it acts. While there is no doubt--and I haven't been coy about--the fact that youngish writers helping young writers to pursue their passions can provide economic aid to youngish writers (while providing even-more-critical assistance to the young writers), I've also been equally transparent in saying that none of this (ALC, MFA rankings, my support for an expansion in the number of MFA programs) is the end-game. The end-game is to radically reconfigure the place of poetry in the world's most powerful economy without doing violence to the art. In some of the middle stages of this process, which will likely take about 25 more years, it will appear to some that the end-game is other than what it is or that the poetry community has reached a stable-state that is unacceptable. But it's an illusion. Things are happening, sociologically, which (as Ron says) are new things--as Jamie says, a sort of recombinance of facts on the ground--and the old discussions are as counter-productive as they are academic. I hope more folks will get on the train, but the train is moving on either way.
S.
A follow-up: Those who decry the professionalization of art have, I think, failed to consider a possibility which could (and will) change everything: in a capitalist society it is not actually possible to professionalize art. What can be done, instead, is to create sufficient structures within the economy and the culture as to give the appearance and even the actual framework of professionalism without its substance (i.e., actual, fully-transformed art). The effect of creating this appearance and this framework is to encourage--both through the dictates and first principles of sociology and those of economics--the prevailing economic structure to provide funding for both existing and emerging artistic communities.
One primary problem art suffers from in a capitalist society is lack of sufficient capital allotment to spread itself--as in such a society it is money that creates that mobility (even if it's merely the money to create a website, or an independent publishing outfit, or a reading series, or whatever; to be clear, when I speak of "spreading art" I am not speaking of popularizing art but rather allowing full access to art for those who wish to enter into and commit to that small and insular community--it's a seemingly minor but actually critical distinction). The MFA is not creating demand for entrance into the insular community of American artists; it is making possible entrance to that community for those who would otherwise not have the financial means or (critically) the emotional support from their peer-group to do so (and those who fail to consider sociology in the decline of art in a capitalist society are missing about half the story).
If the field of creative writing creates sufficient (and the right) internal structures to operate within a capitalist society, it can both be funded by that society but not be altered by it. MFA rankings, transparency in the advertisement of MFA programs, publication of the selectivity of such programs, the availability of services for those interested in MFA programs, and, on the other end of things, ethical structures for paying book contests, online distribution centers for small-press work (like SPD), the increasing availability of DIY publishing, all of these are merely structures which allow poetry to subsist in a society which otherwise would want it dead or irrelevant. Case-in-point: ten years ago a talented young writer might go to medical school rather than pursue a promising life as a poet because of the disapproval of friends and family; now, that writer has a viable, credible, respected, fully-funded graduate school option and his community will understand if he chooses it over medicine. He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it).
None of this matters, though, if the art is damaged. But those who've looked carefully at the question see that it is not: the avant-garde community is perhaps the strongest it has ever been, and experimental poetry now has more avenues for publication than ever before. Experimental poets are making their way into the academy to help nurture (and expand) the next generation of experimental writers (Black Mountain was merely the first instance of this). That's the secret: while certain structures in the poetry community can broaden poetry's appeal, can (at worst) raise the competence and commitment level of the average poet without inducing genius, thereby strengthening poetry's sociological and economic hold in society while fulfilling countless people personally, nothing can be done to destroy lasting art. It will always be made, it will always endure, and the structures now being created can only further that end while simultaneously creating a poetry boom of committed poets in the U.S.
S.
One primary problem art suffers from in a capitalist society is lack of sufficient capital allotment to spread itself--as in such a society it is money that creates that mobility (even if it's merely the money to create a website, or an independent publishing outfit, or a reading series, or whatever; to be clear, when I speak of "spreading art" I am not speaking of popularizing art but rather allowing full access to art for those who wish to enter into and commit to that small and insular community--it's a seemingly minor but actually critical distinction). The MFA is not creating demand for entrance into the insular community of American artists; it is making possible entrance to that community for those who would otherwise not have the financial means or (critically) the emotional support from their peer-group to do so (and those who fail to consider sociology in the decline of art in a capitalist society are missing about half the story).
If the field of creative writing creates sufficient (and the right) internal structures to operate within a capitalist society, it can both be funded by that society but not be altered by it. MFA rankings, transparency in the advertisement of MFA programs, publication of the selectivity of such programs, the availability of services for those interested in MFA programs, and, on the other end of things, ethical structures for paying book contests, online distribution centers for small-press work (like SPD), the increasing availability of DIY publishing, all of these are merely structures which allow poetry to subsist in a society which otherwise would want it dead or irrelevant. Case-in-point: ten years ago a talented young writer might go to medical school rather than pursue a promising life as a poet because of the disapproval of friends and family; now, that writer has a viable, credible, respected, fully-funded graduate school option and his community will understand if he chooses it over medicine. He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it).
None of this matters, though, if the art is damaged. But those who've looked carefully at the question see that it is not: the avant-garde community is perhaps the strongest it has ever been, and experimental poetry now has more avenues for publication than ever before. Experimental poets are making their way into the academy to help nurture (and expand) the next generation of experimental writers (Black Mountain was merely the first instance of this). That's the secret: while certain structures in the poetry community can broaden poetry's appeal, can (at worst) raise the competence and commitment level of the average poet without inducing genius, thereby strengthening poetry's sociological and economic hold in society while fulfilling countless people personally, nothing can be done to destroy lasting art. It will always be made, it will always endure, and the structures now being created can only further that end while simultaneously creating a poetry boom of committed poets in the U.S.
S.
sorry for the previous post-reply tone. it is just that poetry has, for alot of us, been a good place to escape bureaucritization and shouldn't be treated like we have to pay consultants for lawyer-like advice. seth is a good poet, but after a few exchanges with him, it seems to me that he sees poetry as a commodity. and it may be one in reality, but in my little idealist world, it is something that supposedly is better than that.
it's like seth is the neighbor of the party who calls the cops, pours the wine on the ground, and brings in the pamphlets. i mean no offense.
it's like seth is the neighbor of the party who calls the cops, pours the wine on the ground, and brings in the pamphlets. i mean no offense.
Ease up on yoga, California boy! The kavi seers were writing great poetry more than a thousand years before Homer, banalized in the West on account of a functionality that poets should aspire to. The Waste Land ended up quoting yoga.
Seth, let me know when the late night TV ads come on.
Seth, let me know when the late night TV ads come on.
Seth says:
"Those who decry the professionalization of art have, I think, failed to consider a possibility which could (and will) change everything: in a capitalist society it is not actually possible to professionalize art."
than why mfa consultation?
seth states:
"The MFA is not creating demand for entrance into the insular community of American artists; it is making possible entrance to that community for those who would otherwise not have the financial means or (critically) the emotional support from their peer-group to do so (and those who fail to consider sociology in the decline of art in a capitalist society are missing about half the story)."
i ask: financial means? what? the mfa helps people without the financial means? how much is an mfa nowadays seth? what percentage of scholarships?
my sense is that the mfa costs a good amount of money for the average young writer. is it as expensive as going to a reading and making friends?
seth,
you say "insular community? "
and are you talking about keats or williams when you write "Case-in-point: ten years ago a talented young writer might go to medical school rather than pursue a promising life as a poet because of the disapproval of friends and family; now, that writer has a viable, credible, respected, fully-funded graduate school option and his community will understand if he chooses it over medicine. He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it)?
"Those who decry the professionalization of art have, I think, failed to consider a possibility which could (and will) change everything: in a capitalist society it is not actually possible to professionalize art."
than why mfa consultation?
seth states:
"The MFA is not creating demand for entrance into the insular community of American artists; it is making possible entrance to that community for those who would otherwise not have the financial means or (critically) the emotional support from their peer-group to do so (and those who fail to consider sociology in the decline of art in a capitalist society are missing about half the story)."
i ask: financial means? what? the mfa helps people without the financial means? how much is an mfa nowadays seth? what percentage of scholarships?
my sense is that the mfa costs a good amount of money for the average young writer. is it as expensive as going to a reading and making friends?
seth,
you say "insular community? "
and are you talking about keats or williams when you write "Case-in-point: ten years ago a talented young writer might go to medical school rather than pursue a promising life as a poet because of the disapproval of friends and family; now, that writer has a viable, credible, respected, fully-funded graduate school option and his community will understand if he chooses it over medicine. He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it)?
Ry,
Poetry is not a commodity. And I don't see it that way. You are confusing means with ends. E.g.: a person goes to an MFA program between the ages of 21 and 23. They emerge with a degree (commodity), a ms. (marketed much like a commodity), and in some instances [fairly poor, but extant] job prospects (a commodity). What in the world does that have to do with the fact that, at 48, this person might produce the second coming of Dorn's remarkable Gunslinger, or be the next Rae Armantrout, or pen something exceeding The Tennis Court Oath? There's no relation except this: those two years helped the future Great commit himself/herself to poetry, advance their abilities at an accelerated rate (because of having time to write and some light-handed guidance/advice), and then they were able to find employment which both a) helped support them, and b) allowed them to keep poetry at the forefront of their life rather than (as often happens with the lawyer-poet, doctor-poet, family-person-poet, &c &c) in the background. You don't like, say, ALC, or maybe even MFA programs, because you see that as an end--my end, and an end to poetry generally. But I've worked in a profession where time is measured by not months or years but decades spent in cages, a profession where one's course of improvement is measured not by next week's trial but by the sort of lawyer you've become by the time you're 50. I am asking (or trying to ask) this question, in everything I do: What can we do for young people now so that, twenty years from now, they will be more likely to either be a) accomplished, line-redrawing, innovative poets, or b) devout lovers of poetry who help create a sense that in America being a poet is something we should encourage the next generation (and the next and the next) to do--if they have the talent? Up until now, we've been losing potential Ashberys and Creeleys left and right because the poetry community is unwelcoming, the economics of poetry are terrible, and the life-path of a poet is unknowable and scary. Something can be done about all those things. But the end goal is always GREAT ART.
P.S. Yeah, Ry, the public defender is always the one calling the cops, isn't he. No offense, but I'm guessing I was defending bank robbers in jury trials when you were 15.
S.
Poetry is not a commodity. And I don't see it that way. You are confusing means with ends. E.g.: a person goes to an MFA program between the ages of 21 and 23. They emerge with a degree (commodity), a ms. (marketed much like a commodity), and in some instances [fairly poor, but extant] job prospects (a commodity). What in the world does that have to do with the fact that, at 48, this person might produce the second coming of Dorn's remarkable Gunslinger, or be the next Rae Armantrout, or pen something exceeding The Tennis Court Oath? There's no relation except this: those two years helped the future Great commit himself/herself to poetry, advance their abilities at an accelerated rate (because of having time to write and some light-handed guidance/advice), and then they were able to find employment which both a) helped support them, and b) allowed them to keep poetry at the forefront of their life rather than (as often happens with the lawyer-poet, doctor-poet, family-person-poet, &c &c) in the background. You don't like, say, ALC, or maybe even MFA programs, because you see that as an end--my end, and an end to poetry generally. But I've worked in a profession where time is measured by not months or years but decades spent in cages, a profession where one's course of improvement is measured not by next week's trial but by the sort of lawyer you've become by the time you're 50. I am asking (or trying to ask) this question, in everything I do: What can we do for young people now so that, twenty years from now, they will be more likely to either be a) accomplished, line-redrawing, innovative poets, or b) devout lovers of poetry who help create a sense that in America being a poet is something we should encourage the next generation (and the next and the next) to do--if they have the talent? Up until now, we've been losing potential Ashberys and Creeleys left and right because the poetry community is unwelcoming, the economics of poetry are terrible, and the life-path of a poet is unknowable and scary. Something can be done about all those things. But the end goal is always GREAT ART.
P.S. Yeah, Ry, the public defender is always the one calling the cops, isn't he. No offense, but I'm guessing I was defending bank robbers in jury trials when you were 15.
S.
Just read your most recent, Ry. Bluntly, before you write too much about my views, you probably ought to read some of them. There's hardly an essay on MFA programs I've ever written in which I've failed to say never pay a cent for an MFA program. I always advise applicants to turn down any offer that requires payment for the MFA. In rare instances, where an applicant indicates attending a particular program has long been a dream of theirs--usually because of a faculty member there--or that their finances allow it readily, I have said that a fiction student might consider up to 20K in debt. But that is still not advised, and frankly doesn't compare in any way to the 100K+ debt a lawyer or doctor could expect these days. Likewise, the $250 ALC charges is geared toward helping aspiring writers avoid MFA programs which require any debt whatsoever (one beneficial effect of the new rankings is that, generally, the fully-funded programs are getting the most applications and are therefore becoming the most selective and well-respected; ergo, it's taking more and more pre-MFA work to get into such programs, even as [and this is wonderful] the rankings are also helping MFA faculties convince their university overseers to add funding to their programs, expanding the number of fully-funded programs nationally).
In any case, I don't mean this harshly, Ry. Any of this. But at this point there's a mountain of literature about, and data on, MFA programs that virtually no one participating in these debates (Ron included) has read; only current MFA applicants are aware of most of it. If you were following these discussions--and no one's saying you should have been--you would know that the effort is underway, and is in full force, to have the MFA become 3 years of fully-funded time to write, with no responsibilities except for a light teaching load, for young writers. No one--not me, not anyone--approaches the MFA, in actual fact, as some sort of "commodity" that will get you something. An MFA doesn't make a writer, an MFA doesn't get you a job, an MFA doesn't get you published. I say this every time I write about MFA programs, as you'd know if you'd read anything I've written on the subject (and it's generally agreed no one has written more, which I realize is a dubious distinction indeed). The MFA is funded time to write, and in that respect it is inconceivable to me that fellow writers would argue against it. The only lasting argument in opposition to the MFA, which is slowly dying out (because it's factually wrong), is that MFA programs are so outlandishly doctrinal that they ruin 23 year-olds, as writers, for the rest of their lives. Small surprise, they don't (and can't).
S.
In any case, I don't mean this harshly, Ry. Any of this. But at this point there's a mountain of literature about, and data on, MFA programs that virtually no one participating in these debates (Ron included) has read; only current MFA applicants are aware of most of it. If you were following these discussions--and no one's saying you should have been--you would know that the effort is underway, and is in full force, to have the MFA become 3 years of fully-funded time to write, with no responsibilities except for a light teaching load, for young writers. No one--not me, not anyone--approaches the MFA, in actual fact, as some sort of "commodity" that will get you something. An MFA doesn't make a writer, an MFA doesn't get you a job, an MFA doesn't get you published. I say this every time I write about MFA programs, as you'd know if you'd read anything I've written on the subject (and it's generally agreed no one has written more, which I realize is a dubious distinction indeed). The MFA is funded time to write, and in that respect it is inconceivable to me that fellow writers would argue against it. The only lasting argument in opposition to the MFA, which is slowly dying out (because it's factually wrong), is that MFA programs are so outlandishly doctrinal that they ruin 23 year-olds, as writers, for the rest of their lives. Small surprise, they don't (and can't).
S.
Seth--OK, I'm curious. You seem to see the MFA program as a means for poetry to achieve, via institutional power, autonomy, without giving anything up in so doing: poetry will be funded by society, but not altered by it.
And your argument about professionalization seems similar: poets can become, say, college professors; we should then take their vociferous denials of investment in the academy, their insistence that they merely use the academy and are utterly different from dull scholars, entirely at face value.
My question, then: what sort of "sociology" do you mean to invoke?
And your argument about professionalization seems similar: poets can become, say, college professors; we should then take their vociferous denials of investment in the academy, their insistence that they merely use the academy and are utterly different from dull scholars, entirely at face value.
My question, then: what sort of "sociology" do you mean to invoke?
Its value to me as someone polishing a portfolio is probably greater and more to the point, if only on points of order, presentation, and the arcana that an MFA grad is more likely (though not guaranteed) to know.
As an MFA grad, I can tell you that we're no more likely to know these things than any other teacher or artist you might encounter. For presentation, follow the general rules for publishing (no pink paper, conservative fonts, name and address on the header of the first page unless instructed otherwise, number your pages). For order, well, I'm not sure how much that matters at all; I saw my own MFA professors jumbling poems from applicant portfolios up into all sorts of (dis)order, though I will say that it can't hurt to both end and begin on a strong note as an artist, (you'll be able to intuit what the strong notes are; we all know when we've produced something that's just not as strong. Trust your instincts!)
As for arcana, well, if your MFA consultants are going to read your cards, then I suppose that can't hurt, though I know a great palmist in Gainesville who will do the same for a Jackson! :)
Note that I'm not assuming that you, or any other applicant, are unaware of job scarcity. A large part of my financial objections, though, are based on what your life will look like in the MFA program. I don't think I knew any MFAs, myself included--and I had savings before I came here--who wasn't scraping by in part thanks to student loans, credit cards, or second jobs. And we were all fully funded. Something that programs--any graduate programs, really, not just CRW--don't like to talk about is the fact that grad students are cheap, cheap labor. Qualifying for food stamps cheap. The couple hundred dollars you might spend on a consulting service can make a real difference when, over the next several years, it might be half a month's income for any given month.
As an MFA grad, I can tell you that we're no more likely to know these things than any other teacher or artist you might encounter. For presentation, follow the general rules for publishing (no pink paper, conservative fonts, name and address on the header of the first page unless instructed otherwise, number your pages). For order, well, I'm not sure how much that matters at all; I saw my own MFA professors jumbling poems from applicant portfolios up into all sorts of (dis)order, though I will say that it can't hurt to both end and begin on a strong note as an artist, (you'll be able to intuit what the strong notes are; we all know when we've produced something that's just not as strong. Trust your instincts!)
As for arcana, well, if your MFA consultants are going to read your cards, then I suppose that can't hurt, though I know a great palmist in Gainesville who will do the same for a Jackson! :)
Note that I'm not assuming that you, or any other applicant, are unaware of job scarcity. A large part of my financial objections, though, are based on what your life will look like in the MFA program. I don't think I knew any MFAs, myself included--and I had savings before I came here--who wasn't scraping by in part thanks to student loans, credit cards, or second jobs. And we were all fully funded. Something that programs--any graduate programs, really, not just CRW--don't like to talk about is the fact that grad students are cheap, cheap labor. Qualifying for food stamps cheap. The couple hundred dollars you might spend on a consulting service can make a real difference when, over the next several years, it might be half a month's income for any given month.
Typolicious today; I meant "(as an artist, ou'll be able to intuit what the strong notes are; we all know when we've produced something that's just not as strong. Trust your instincts!)"
Hi Nick,
You wrote:
"...we should then take their vociferous denials of investment in the academy, their insistence that they merely use the academy and are utterly different from dull scholars, entirely at face value."
No, I don't agree with this. This is a straw man. You're setting up a false choice. You're saying that one cannot be both a college professor who is "invested" in his/her academic field and also an exciting, innovative writer. I think there's no evidence for that, and in fact a good deal of evidence to the contrary--including the case history of every respected experimental poet who's ever taught in the Academy. The problem is that the way you've constructed the above sentence is so convoluted that it's difficult to parse: yes, some poets in the Academy are actually invested in the Academy, so if they say otherwise they're lying, but that doesn't mean they can't be dedicated to poetry also and quite talented; yes, some other poets in the Academy probably are telling the truth when they say they're not invested in the Academy; yes, some poets in the Academy are quite different from scholars; no, some poets in the Academy are not different from scholars &c &c &c.
As to sociology, I'm talking about how artists' communities are formed and maintained, how they expand and contract (including their permeability); also, broadly, how these communities operate within larger, artistically-disinterested societies, and how these operations can make it more or less likely that someone with a genuine aptitude for art will choose to cross over into an artists' community (and/or how easy it will be for such an individual, or any individual, to straddle multiple communities). One thing Ron and others have always taken for granted I feel--odd, considering their intense sociological scrutiny of MFA programs--is that any young person who has the skill to be an amazing, innovative poet will, in fact, make the decision to strive for this, and will not feel any pressures in the opposite direction.
Think about that: Ron and some others have seemed to intimate that MFA graduates will, for the sixty years after their MFA, be rigidly adherent to anything that was ever said to them during the MFA (even though the MFA is an art school, not a professional school, so its methods of "instruction" are hardly that or intended as that). And yet, if we take an amazingly talented fifteen year-old--a high school sophomore--no one gives any thought to how, say, the disapproval of that young man's parents (say he's middle-class) might keep him from ever putting pen to paper. It makes no sense to fret the one and not the other.
S.
You wrote:
"...we should then take their vociferous denials of investment in the academy, their insistence that they merely use the academy and are utterly different from dull scholars, entirely at face value."
No, I don't agree with this. This is a straw man. You're setting up a false choice. You're saying that one cannot be both a college professor who is "invested" in his/her academic field and also an exciting, innovative writer. I think there's no evidence for that, and in fact a good deal of evidence to the contrary--including the case history of every respected experimental poet who's ever taught in the Academy. The problem is that the way you've constructed the above sentence is so convoluted that it's difficult to parse: yes, some poets in the Academy are actually invested in the Academy, so if they say otherwise they're lying, but that doesn't mean they can't be dedicated to poetry also and quite talented; yes, some other poets in the Academy probably are telling the truth when they say they're not invested in the Academy; yes, some poets in the Academy are quite different from scholars; no, some poets in the Academy are not different from scholars &c &c &c.
As to sociology, I'm talking about how artists' communities are formed and maintained, how they expand and contract (including their permeability); also, broadly, how these communities operate within larger, artistically-disinterested societies, and how these operations can make it more or less likely that someone with a genuine aptitude for art will choose to cross over into an artists' community (and/or how easy it will be for such an individual, or any individual, to straddle multiple communities). One thing Ron and others have always taken for granted I feel--odd, considering their intense sociological scrutiny of MFA programs--is that any young person who has the skill to be an amazing, innovative poet will, in fact, make the decision to strive for this, and will not feel any pressures in the opposite direction.
Think about that: Ron and some others have seemed to intimate that MFA graduates will, for the sixty years after their MFA, be rigidly adherent to anything that was ever said to them during the MFA (even though the MFA is an art school, not a professional school, so its methods of "instruction" are hardly that or intended as that). And yet, if we take an amazingly talented fifteen year-old--a high school sophomore--no one gives any thought to how, say, the disapproval of that young man's parents (say he's middle-class) might keep him from ever putting pen to paper. It makes no sense to fret the one and not the other.
S.
The plight of the MFA graduates and those who don't get into the top programs does probably pale beside the plight of the people of Myanmar, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe -- just to put this into perspective...
The plight of the MFA graduates and those who don't get into the top programs does probably pale beside the plight of the people of Myanmar, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe -- just to put this into perspective...
I don't think that there are any MFA grads who aren't thankful that they don't live in a third-world nation. But, while this isn't an oppression olympics, I don't think that gratitude makes it any less a shame that, at the University of Florida, which is fairly generously funded compared to many schools, the graduate student union has been unsuccessfully fighting tooth and nail for years for either bonuses or raises that would bring the 9-month wage (summer teaching isn't guaranteed) for Master's students over the federal poverty level.
It seems like a uniquely American response, and the type of response that got the US into its financial situation in the first place, to throw money, which is really needed to cover the basic cost of living, at a problem that may or may not exist with no guarantee of success.
I much better like the proposed solution offered by one of my MFA cohorts on another post on this topic: "If it turns out that many applicants end up with a Checkbook Advantage because of this service, then perhaps many [. . .] will see that as an initiative to up the standard as far as what they're willing to do for each other. More manuscript trading (more networks built, friendships made, and drinks shared at AWP). Woo hoo!"
Idealistic? Maybe. But it's how many of us got here in the first place--stumbling across current MFA students or grads on the internet who very generously donated their time (Sara Elizabeth Johnson, now a UOregon grad, was particularly helpful to me, and we still correspond with one another about writing and MFA programs). Of course, I should put my money where my mouth is: if Jamie or any other MFA prospects would like to drop me an email and ask questions, talk programs or portfolios, feel free. My address is in my profile. No guarantee, of course, but there's no guarantee even if you pay for this sort of advice--but, like I said, you might soon need that money to buy, you know, groceries.
I don't think that there are any MFA grads who aren't thankful that they don't live in a third-world nation. But, while this isn't an oppression olympics, I don't think that gratitude makes it any less a shame that, at the University of Florida, which is fairly generously funded compared to many schools, the graduate student union has been unsuccessfully fighting tooth and nail for years for either bonuses or raises that would bring the 9-month wage (summer teaching isn't guaranteed) for Master's students over the federal poverty level.
It seems like a uniquely American response, and the type of response that got the US into its financial situation in the first place, to throw money, which is really needed to cover the basic cost of living, at a problem that may or may not exist with no guarantee of success.
I much better like the proposed solution offered by one of my MFA cohorts on another post on this topic: "If it turns out that many applicants end up with a Checkbook Advantage because of this service, then perhaps many [. . .] will see that as an initiative to up the standard as far as what they're willing to do for each other. More manuscript trading (more networks built, friendships made, and drinks shared at AWP). Woo hoo!"
Idealistic? Maybe. But it's how many of us got here in the first place--stumbling across current MFA students or grads on the internet who very generously donated their time (Sara Elizabeth Johnson, now a UOregon grad, was particularly helpful to me, and we still correspond with one another about writing and MFA programs). Of course, I should put my money where my mouth is: if Jamie or any other MFA prospects would like to drop me an email and ask questions, talk programs or portfolios, feel free. My address is in my profile. No guarantee, of course, but there's no guarantee even if you pay for this sort of advice--but, like I said, you might soon need that money to buy, you know, groceries.
Seth:
My experience at Iowa, rather than presenting the possibility or example of a "community," taught me how extraordinarily SELFISH most of the participants were. The Workshop was a power structure. At its head was the director, and underneath him were two or three semi-permanent "regulars"; underneath them, the "other" instructors--invited only for a semester or a year or two, then the "chosen" TA's (perhaps 4, I forget), who got to "teach" an undergraduate poetry workshop, and then there was everyone else. About 1/3 of those others got department TA jobs--uncoveted, but a source of cash.
Applicants chosen to attend were "marked" as they arrived, separated into "promising" and "less promising" groups. Most of the less promising were channeled into the "temporary" appointees groups. Within a few short weeks, the faculty had identified which of the class would be submitting manuscripts for publication and prizes, and began to promote them onto the star track. In the three years I was there, a few even had book contracts by the end of their first year; a handful had to wait another year or two for this.
Because the workshop fed off of its fame, its first priority was publication and prizes and appointments--just as in regular academic departments. Therefore, it needed to promote its reputation by pointing to the recent success stories. In the late 1960's, James Tate was the Iowa poster-boy, with The Lost Pilot. It was plainly obvious that Tate would never have needed a workshop to succeed, but that didn't matter.
To attendees, the message was clear: Curry favor with the permanent faculty, and hope your work developed fast enough to be recognized as worthy. Naturally, individual writers tended to try to please faculty. Imitation and sucking-up was rampant. Instructors were forthright about what they liked and didn't like. If you wanted to be accepted, you wrote in a way that pleased whomever you "needed" to get ahead.
End Part I
My experience at Iowa, rather than presenting the possibility or example of a "community," taught me how extraordinarily SELFISH most of the participants were. The Workshop was a power structure. At its head was the director, and underneath him were two or three semi-permanent "regulars"; underneath them, the "other" instructors--invited only for a semester or a year or two, then the "chosen" TA's (perhaps 4, I forget), who got to "teach" an undergraduate poetry workshop, and then there was everyone else. About 1/3 of those others got department TA jobs--uncoveted, but a source of cash.
Applicants chosen to attend were "marked" as they arrived, separated into "promising" and "less promising" groups. Most of the less promising were channeled into the "temporary" appointees groups. Within a few short weeks, the faculty had identified which of the class would be submitting manuscripts for publication and prizes, and began to promote them onto the star track. In the three years I was there, a few even had book contracts by the end of their first year; a handful had to wait another year or two for this.
Because the workshop fed off of its fame, its first priority was publication and prizes and appointments--just as in regular academic departments. Therefore, it needed to promote its reputation by pointing to the recent success stories. In the late 1960's, James Tate was the Iowa poster-boy, with The Lost Pilot. It was plainly obvious that Tate would never have needed a workshop to succeed, but that didn't matter.
To attendees, the message was clear: Curry favor with the permanent faculty, and hope your work developed fast enough to be recognized as worthy. Naturally, individual writers tended to try to please faculty. Imitation and sucking-up was rampant. Instructors were forthright about what they liked and didn't like. If you wanted to be accepted, you wrote in a way that pleased whomever you "needed" to get ahead.
End Part I
Part II
During the years I was at the workshop, it was mostly dominated by conservatives. Each year, one or two outsiders would be invited, as window-dressing. They and their followers were shunted to one side, because they couldn't be "used," and they didn't fit the proper image mold being promoted.
Student-poets tended to regard the workshop as a grim game. How to get ahead. Every man (or woman) for himself. This made the actual workshop scene largely irrelevant. The point wasn't to improve your work or your knowledge of the craft; it was to sort out and denominate. It wasn't a social club, or a literary coterie, or a team. It was a race. But for the most part, either you were already "there" (ready for publication and advancement) or you weren't. There wasn't enough time to "mature" and "develop"--and in any event, that wasn't the real function of the place. It was a machine to process a four or five "promising" figures, while all the others paid the bill ("tuition").
That's how workshps are "run." Their faculty know this, though it may not even be openly discussed. The students catch on immediately. But there isn't any recourse; it's altogether possible that "someday"--perhaps in five years--your work might eventually attain notoriety and be published.
Did any of these people benefit from participating in the workshop? My conclusion is no.
Ron's solution is a literary coterie. Start your own little group, give readings, lectures, write essays and publish "little" magazines. Socialize together, and create a support (group) system of mutual gratification and promotion. --all this "in place of" a workshop.
As Ron says, those who don't want to be a part of one such group have "issues". Heaven forbid that any writer have "issues"! They may miss the boat entirely.
Is a literary coterie more helpful to a writer than a workshop? Maybe we could have consultants design regional literary work groups. There should be a coffee house, and a local free meeting room. Somebody should have access to a printing press. Everyone should keep a diary, and an archive should be created for future reference. A core reading list is useful, organized around a few straightforward formal principles ("no rhymed poems allowed" or "lines of equal length is discouraged" for instance). In Berkeley, there was the Berkeley Poets Cooperative--Ron remembers it well. They sold their little magazines on the street.
I wonder if anyone has yet written a novel about a workshop, or a literary coterie. Now there's fertile ground!
During the years I was at the workshop, it was mostly dominated by conservatives. Each year, one or two outsiders would be invited, as window-dressing. They and their followers were shunted to one side, because they couldn't be "used," and they didn't fit the proper image mold being promoted.
Student-poets tended to regard the workshop as a grim game. How to get ahead. Every man (or woman) for himself. This made the actual workshop scene largely irrelevant. The point wasn't to improve your work or your knowledge of the craft; it was to sort out and denominate. It wasn't a social club, or a literary coterie, or a team. It was a race. But for the most part, either you were already "there" (ready for publication and advancement) or you weren't. There wasn't enough time to "mature" and "develop"--and in any event, that wasn't the real function of the place. It was a machine to process a four or five "promising" figures, while all the others paid the bill ("tuition").
That's how workshps are "run." Their faculty know this, though it may not even be openly discussed. The students catch on immediately. But there isn't any recourse; it's altogether possible that "someday"--perhaps in five years--your work might eventually attain notoriety and be published.
Did any of these people benefit from participating in the workshop? My conclusion is no.
Ron's solution is a literary coterie. Start your own little group, give readings, lectures, write essays and publish "little" magazines. Socialize together, and create a support (group) system of mutual gratification and promotion. --all this "in place of" a workshop.
As Ron says, those who don't want to be a part of one such group have "issues". Heaven forbid that any writer have "issues"! They may miss the boat entirely.
Is a literary coterie more helpful to a writer than a workshop? Maybe we could have consultants design regional literary work groups. There should be a coffee house, and a local free meeting room. Somebody should have access to a printing press. Everyone should keep a diary, and an archive should be created for future reference. A core reading list is useful, organized around a few straightforward formal principles ("no rhymed poems allowed" or "lines of equal length is discouraged" for instance). In Berkeley, there was the Berkeley Poets Cooperative--Ron remembers it well. They sold their little magazines on the street.
I wonder if anyone has yet written a novel about a workshop, or a literary coterie. Now there's fertile ground!
I happen to have a copy of Berkeley Poets Cooperative/12
so, I guess about 1973 or so?
seems like most if not all of the writers/poets included merely creating credentials for their "clubbies"
as not much included worth the $1.50 per issue.
not much "working the poems" seems to have taken place in (as the New York Times Magazine says on the back):
"..the oldest and most successful poetry cooperative in the country."
here is opening of one of the poems in this issue:
LEAVING
for M
I carry my eyes open wide
against the time when I
will have to live with
just the memory of you
welling in my wrist
(etc)
I cld say more.... but who cares?
"coterie" is a better term than "clubbie"
bottom line:
as then, so now...
NOTHING MUCH EVER HAPPENS IN or VIA A GROUP
...never!
at least once upon a time there was SOME groping!
so, I guess about 1973 or so?
seems like most if not all of the writers/poets included merely creating credentials for their "clubbies"
as not much included worth the $1.50 per issue.
not much "working the poems" seems to have taken place in (as the New York Times Magazine says on the back):
"..the oldest and most successful poetry cooperative in the country."
here is opening of one of the poems in this issue:
LEAVING
for M
I carry my eyes open wide
against the time when I
will have to live with
just the memory of you
welling in my wrist
(etc)
I cld say more.... but who cares?
"coterie" is a better term than "clubbie"
bottom line:
as then, so now...
NOTHING MUCH EVER HAPPENS IN or VIA A GROUP
...never!
at least once upon a time there was SOME groping!
.
My poetry critique group has been of great help to me for many years. I have read them most of my poems. There are seven of us in all: myself, two cats, one dog, a Wisteria vine and two live-oak trees. They have liked all of my poems and have never offered any negative criticism.
Poetry is a solitary thing. Duets are for singers! Groups are for therapy!
My poetry critique group has been of great help to me for many years. I have read them most of my poems. There are seven of us in all: myself, two cats, one dog, a Wisteria vine and two live-oak trees. They have liked all of my poems and have never offered any negative criticism.
Poetry is a solitary thing. Duets are for singers! Groups are for therapy!
It's been a long time since I stepped into the blog world (I saw this linked from a facebook page.)
Acquiring the status of "professional writer" is a powerful desire for many -- and quite separable from the status of "writer". As I've watched my writing peers age through the system, I've seen the two desires separate out quite cleanly.
The consulting firm seems helpful for the first desire; calling it a politically progressive and radical action is a bit of a stretch -- some desires should not, perhaps, be satisfied.
I was lucky to have read, when I was 21 or so, the fantastic series "Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent", which ran at McSweeneys. I suggest stopping there first!
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/events/askaformeragent.html
Josh: When do I get to go to the cocktail party with clever, uninhibited women and chummy, eccentric men who admire and respect me?
JKH, FPLA: If by "chummy" you mean smelling of shark bait, then this can be arranged immediately. Otherwise, I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to, and please don't ask me about this again.
Acquiring the status of "professional writer" is a powerful desire for many -- and quite separable from the status of "writer". As I've watched my writing peers age through the system, I've seen the two desires separate out quite cleanly.
The consulting firm seems helpful for the first desire; calling it a politically progressive and radical action is a bit of a stretch -- some desires should not, perhaps, be satisfied.
I was lucky to have read, when I was 21 or so, the fantastic series "Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent", which ran at McSweeneys. I suggest stopping there first!
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/events/askaformeragent.html
Josh: When do I get to go to the cocktail party with clever, uninhibited women and chummy, eccentric men who admire and respect me?
JKH, FPLA: If by "chummy" you mean smelling of shark bait, then this can be arranged immediately. Otherwise, I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to, and please don't ask me about this again.
After I've read through 50 comments, I've become more and more impressed by the insight and scope of your original post, Ron, you bad boy, you. The comments have come to encompass the problematic relationship between capitalism and poetry. Now we're getting somewhere. Unfortunately, it seems your final question has been ignored, maybe because it's unanswerable or perhaps because it's so problematic.
Having benefitted from Seth's research (thanks) at the beginning of this year, I knew that this comment box would be filled with his long-winded comments. It's been both entertaining and exhausting.
I think Seth touches on your final question in a comment that I find particularly troubling, the "case-in-point anecdote" that ten years ago a young writer would have been shamed into medical school, but now there is a welcoming community for him or her. Were you referring to James Joyce or William Carlos Williams when you made up this story? Instead of sufferring poverty as a Berlitz language instructor after he dropped out of med school, Joyce and his family could suffer under a graduate student's stipend. But from Ellmann's biography I don't get the impression that he liked lit classes that much anyway. And Williams wouldn't have had to deliver all those babies.
And since it's Friday afternoon, I'll just call bullshit on two more items:
You continue: "He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it)." How can a claim like that possibly be supported? It's ridiculous.
&
"That says nothing about whether a young writer would want to spend 1/7th of the cost of applying to MFA programs" 1/7th? That's a pretty arbitrary statistic, considering that the number it's based on is completely hypothetical. But I guess you meant average cost, so I shouldn't be too harsh.
I am not criticizing you for starting such a business. I think it's fine. But your PR needs some work.
Having benefitted from Seth's research (thanks) at the beginning of this year, I knew that this comment box would be filled with his long-winded comments. It's been both entertaining and exhausting.
I think Seth touches on your final question in a comment that I find particularly troubling, the "case-in-point anecdote" that ten years ago a young writer would have been shamed into medical school, but now there is a welcoming community for him or her. Were you referring to James Joyce or William Carlos Williams when you made up this story? Instead of sufferring poverty as a Berlitz language instructor after he dropped out of med school, Joyce and his family could suffer under a graduate student's stipend. But from Ellmann's biography I don't get the impression that he liked lit classes that much anyway. And Williams wouldn't have had to deliver all those babies.
And since it's Friday afternoon, I'll just call bullshit on two more items:
You continue: "He may not end up a poet, or he may. But he will support the community his entire life (and will be the happier for it)." How can a claim like that possibly be supported? It's ridiculous.
&
"That says nothing about whether a young writer would want to spend 1/7th of the cost of applying to MFA programs" 1/7th? That's a pretty arbitrary statistic, considering that the number it's based on is completely hypothetical. But I guess you meant average cost, so I shouldn't be too harsh.
I am not criticizing you for starting such a business. I think it's fine. But your PR needs some work.
Curtis, Iowa now is not Iowa then.
Gary, I don't think we need to consign artists to isolation--either before, during, or after moments of inspiration and expression. Being an artist is a miserable enough prospect w/o that.
Simon, sorry, to be clear, I don't think ALC is a radically progressive political act. I do think adding to the options young writers have, what the MFA does I mean (and what MFA research does, like funding rankings), is part of a larger change in the structure of being a poet in America which, for all the whining we hear, does not ultimately affect anyone's art. But while a service like ALC may be a natural outgrowth of changes in the structure of the poetry community, I stated above the two reasons behind ALC, and neither was political in nature.
Patrick: thanks.
S.
Gary, I don't think we need to consign artists to isolation--either before, during, or after moments of inspiration and expression. Being an artist is a miserable enough prospect w/o that.
Simon, sorry, to be clear, I don't think ALC is a radically progressive political act. I do think adding to the options young writers have, what the MFA does I mean (and what MFA research does, like funding rankings), is part of a larger change in the structure of being a poet in America which, for all the whining we hear, does not ultimately affect anyone's art. But while a service like ALC may be a natural outgrowth of changes in the structure of the poetry community, I stated above the two reasons behind ALC, and neither was political in nature.
Patrick: thanks.
S.
Phoebe,
As someone who makes 8K/year as a teaching assistant, and who works (at ALC) with other writers who make around that, I can't think of anything more important to a student's bottom line--speaking as someone who is a student right now--than keeping your debt load low. ALC is trying to help people get into fully-funded programs, and avoid programs which cost upwards of $100,000. Most people will and do outlay small sums, throughout their lives, to avoid paying larger sums later, or having more debt later (I assume, for instance, you took on your college debt because you knew you were saving money on the back end by being more likely to get both a job generally and a higher-paying job specifically). I'm also not sure the lesson of ALC, or TSE, or me personally, is that writers should start helping each other out as a contrast to what I do. I spent three years working with hundreds of applicants for free, and I still do more free work in this field, I'm guessing, than anyone. So look: I understand (from things you've said on your blog and elsewhere) you feel that your own personal experience applying to MFA programs has provided you with the special key that unlocks everyone else's experience--financially and in terms of matriculation research and preparation--but I think you should reconsider. I had the same experience as you (I applied to MFAs in the fall of 2006 with no information, no TSE, none of that) and yet I don't draw from--or need to--my own personal experience in gauging what others are going through. Phoebe, what I do is I judge from the hundreds of MFA applicants I have worked with (for free) over the past three years. When you spend that much of your time working for others for free, you realize how foolish and short-sighted it is to be guided merely by your own personal experiences. And so I'm not. When I write about MFA programs, when I get long-winded and sanctimonious and preachy and all those other unpleasant things, I'm thinking of the sort of horror stories young writers have been privately e-mailing me for years, and which you haven't heard, the abiding theme of which is: I wish I'd had more information. Sometimes that longed-for information is data, sometimes it's portfolio feedback, sometimes it's just a piece of timely advice--whatever the information, another abiding theme of these e-mails is that I'm now up to eyeballs in debt and regret it. So if you think I don't get the groceries thing, think again. I get it in my own life, I get it in the lives of my fellow students making less than minimal wage. But I also have a perspective you don't have, and it's worth considering that a) you don't have that perspective, and b) that you don't have it in part because I realized I owed other writers my free services three years before you did, and so I've heard about and learned from stories and situations you simply have never encountered personally.
S.
As someone who makes 8K/year as a teaching assistant, and who works (at ALC) with other writers who make around that, I can't think of anything more important to a student's bottom line--speaking as someone who is a student right now--than keeping your debt load low. ALC is trying to help people get into fully-funded programs, and avoid programs which cost upwards of $100,000. Most people will and do outlay small sums, throughout their lives, to avoid paying larger sums later, or having more debt later (I assume, for instance, you took on your college debt because you knew you were saving money on the back end by being more likely to get both a job generally and a higher-paying job specifically). I'm also not sure the lesson of ALC, or TSE, or me personally, is that writers should start helping each other out as a contrast to what I do. I spent three years working with hundreds of applicants for free, and I still do more free work in this field, I'm guessing, than anyone. So look: I understand (from things you've said on your blog and elsewhere) you feel that your own personal experience applying to MFA programs has provided you with the special key that unlocks everyone else's experience--financially and in terms of matriculation research and preparation--but I think you should reconsider. I had the same experience as you (I applied to MFAs in the fall of 2006 with no information, no TSE, none of that) and yet I don't draw from--or need to--my own personal experience in gauging what others are going through. Phoebe, what I do is I judge from the hundreds of MFA applicants I have worked with (for free) over the past three years. When you spend that much of your time working for others for free, you realize how foolish and short-sighted it is to be guided merely by your own personal experiences. And so I'm not. When I write about MFA programs, when I get long-winded and sanctimonious and preachy and all those other unpleasant things, I'm thinking of the sort of horror stories young writers have been privately e-mailing me for years, and which you haven't heard, the abiding theme of which is: I wish I'd had more information. Sometimes that longed-for information is data, sometimes it's portfolio feedback, sometimes it's just a piece of timely advice--whatever the information, another abiding theme of these e-mails is that I'm now up to eyeballs in debt and regret it. So if you think I don't get the groceries thing, think again. I get it in my own life, I get it in the lives of my fellow students making less than minimal wage. But I also have a perspective you don't have, and it's worth considering that a) you don't have that perspective, and b) that you don't have it in part because I realized I owed other writers my free services three years before you did, and so I've heard about and learned from stories and situations you simply have never encountered personally.
S.
So look: I understand (from things you've said on your blog and elsewhere) you feel that your own personal experience applying to MFA programs has provided you with the special key that unlocks everyone else's experience--financially and in terms of matriculation research and preparation--but I think you should reconsider. I had the same experience as you (I applied to MFAs in the fall of 2006 with no information, no TSE, none of that) and yet I don't draw from--or need to--my own personal experience in gauging what others are going through
Seth, it strikes me as beyond bizarre (and fairly condescending) that you would think I hold some "the special key that unlocks everyone else's experience" when I've said throughout this debate that I think no one holds that key for potential applicants. The high degree of subjectivity of both the process and any advice you receive--from anyone!--makes that especially true. In fact, I'd be the first to admit if I wasn't the right reader for someone or felt unqualified to give advice (I said as much in my last blog post on the subject, FWIW).
As for realizing this "three years after you did", I've actually had a great number of conversations about MFA programs with people--potential applicants, even!--from the PW Speakeasy and on internet communities like livejournal and metafilter. But I think it's important to state, forwardly and outright, in avenues where prospective MFAs are likely to stumble across it, that there are still people within these communities, people who are also publishing and writing and earning MFA degrees, that are also willing to help for free. As a staunch defender of your own free advice and as someone who apparently sees himself as dedicated to helping potential MFAs, I'd think you'd welcome more professors and MFA graduates opening dialogs with young writers.
If it's that you fear the competition of another recent MFA graduate coming out and saying, "Hey guys! If you want to talk about this stuff, shoot me an e-mail," I wouldn't worry too much. If your services are priced fairly in the eyes of the consumer (subjective, of course, but I find the prices exorbitant and a bad financial investment for someone about to embark in graduate school), you have nothing to worry about.
As for the "investment" of my undergraduate student loans, I was an English major and didn't know better. I wouldn't make the same mistakes knowing today what I do now, and I wish I'd had access to better advice at 18 to steer me that way. But that's pretty much completely irrelevant, isn't it?
Seth, it strikes me as beyond bizarre (and fairly condescending) that you would think I hold some "the special key that unlocks everyone else's experience" when I've said throughout this debate that I think no one holds that key for potential applicants. The high degree of subjectivity of both the process and any advice you receive--from anyone!--makes that especially true. In fact, I'd be the first to admit if I wasn't the right reader for someone or felt unqualified to give advice (I said as much in my last blog post on the subject, FWIW).
As for realizing this "three years after you did", I've actually had a great number of conversations about MFA programs with people--potential applicants, even!--from the PW Speakeasy and on internet communities like livejournal and metafilter. But I think it's important to state, forwardly and outright, in avenues where prospective MFAs are likely to stumble across it, that there are still people within these communities, people who are also publishing and writing and earning MFA degrees, that are also willing to help for free. As a staunch defender of your own free advice and as someone who apparently sees himself as dedicated to helping potential MFAs, I'd think you'd welcome more professors and MFA graduates opening dialogs with young writers.
If it's that you fear the competition of another recent MFA graduate coming out and saying, "Hey guys! If you want to talk about this stuff, shoot me an e-mail," I wouldn't worry too much. If your services are priced fairly in the eyes of the consumer (subjective, of course, but I find the prices exorbitant and a bad financial investment for someone about to embark in graduate school), you have nothing to worry about.
As for the "investment" of my undergraduate student loans, I was an English major and didn't know better. I wouldn't make the same mistakes knowing today what I do now, and I wish I'd had access to better advice at 18 to steer me that way. But that's pretty much completely irrelevant, isn't it?
"Gary, I don't think we need to consign artists to isolation--either before, during, or after moments of inspiration and expression. Being an artist is a miserable enough prospect w/o that."
What's wrong with isolation?
I think you're working with a debased idea of the artist if you think isolation & solitude aren't necessary.
What's wrong with isolation?
I think you're working with a debased idea of the artist if you think isolation & solitude aren't necessary.
Curtis,
That's exactly what I experienced at Iowa decades after you had left. Nothing has changed. I always appreciate your comments here. You're not afraid to say anything. What do you care? You're in your sixties.
C.
That's exactly what I experienced at Iowa decades after you had left. Nothing has changed. I always appreciate your comments here. You're not afraid to say anything. What do you care? You're in your sixties.
C.
Gotta snark here: I love that Seth A. "thanks" Patrick, the same Patrick I do believe who wrote that Seth's comments here were (among other things) "long-winded."
That relates to something else. I have no problem with somebody trying to sell anything, assuming no harm or hurt is involved. In fact, I love poets who sell their poems, and wish Seth A. the best with his new book.
But I've read Seth's comments here and elsewhere. Read too his blog posts, including a legal analysis or two. My opinion is that anyone who's considering paying him for advice about how to write prose anything should be given two words of advice:
Caveat Emptor!
That relates to something else. I have no problem with somebody trying to sell anything, assuming no harm or hurt is involved. In fact, I love poets who sell their poems, and wish Seth A. the best with his new book.
But I've read Seth's comments here and elsewhere. Read too his blog posts, including a legal analysis or two. My opinion is that anyone who's considering paying him for advice about how to write prose anything should be given two words of advice:
Caveat Emptor!
Dear Mr. Abramson:
Since you addressed me personally here, I’ll take advantage of the opportunity (and Ron’s generosity) to tell you that I have enjoyed your blog. I even posted there a couple of times, though, admittedly, mostly to point out why I disagreed with you. :-)
Being a poet is not like deciding to become a carpenter or a brick mason and going off to learn your trade. Poetry is innate…a gift, a talent. One is born a poet. No school can teach you to be an artist.
I spent a year at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Most of our instructors were famous artists (at the time). Assuming they even showed up, weren’t half-drunk when they did and didn’t fall asleep in class, we were provided, as young artists, a magnificent education. We studied painting, sculpture, Art History, went to museums or gallery shows weekly and were totally immersed in the visual arts. I learned that I was a terrible painter! The next year I went to a University as an English major. I decided that I should do what I did best…write! This MFA stuff reminds me of that old children’s counting song “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.” You can choose to be a physician or an attorney, but you can’t just choose to be an Indian Chief. You can’t change your ethnicity and put in an application to the Lakota tribe.
I’m with Henry Gould on this. One should have all the tools one needs to be a poet by the Fifth grade. Then you should spend the next ten years reading everything you can and writing, writing, writing. But it’s ridiculous to simply decide that, rather than being a doctor, you want to be a poet and you’re going to go to Poetry School to learn how.
I would also like to say that this entire concept of being paid to write is ludicrous. If you want to be a poet, get a damned job! Write at night and on weekends. Live in the real world so at least you’ll have something to write about.
Finally, here is my best advice to aspiring writers (after Eliot): Good poets learn everything they can. Great poets forget everything they learned.
Gary B. Fitzgerald
P.S. Being an artist is not “a miserable enough prospect”. It’s a blessing. Not exactly comparable to the suffering of the saints, but a worthy hardship nonetheless.
Since you addressed me personally here, I’ll take advantage of the opportunity (and Ron’s generosity) to tell you that I have enjoyed your blog. I even posted there a couple of times, though, admittedly, mostly to point out why I disagreed with you. :-)
Being a poet is not like deciding to become a carpenter or a brick mason and going off to learn your trade. Poetry is innate…a gift, a talent. One is born a poet. No school can teach you to be an artist.
I spent a year at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Most of our instructors were famous artists (at the time). Assuming they even showed up, weren’t half-drunk when they did and didn’t fall asleep in class, we were provided, as young artists, a magnificent education. We studied painting, sculpture, Art History, went to museums or gallery shows weekly and were totally immersed in the visual arts. I learned that I was a terrible painter! The next year I went to a University as an English major. I decided that I should do what I did best…write! This MFA stuff reminds me of that old children’s counting song “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.” You can choose to be a physician or an attorney, but you can’t just choose to be an Indian Chief. You can’t change your ethnicity and put in an application to the Lakota tribe.
I’m with Henry Gould on this. One should have all the tools one needs to be a poet by the Fifth grade. Then you should spend the next ten years reading everything you can and writing, writing, writing. But it’s ridiculous to simply decide that, rather than being a doctor, you want to be a poet and you’re going to go to Poetry School to learn how.
I would also like to say that this entire concept of being paid to write is ludicrous. If you want to be a poet, get a damned job! Write at night and on weekends. Live in the real world so at least you’ll have something to write about.
Finally, here is my best advice to aspiring writers (after Eliot): Good poets learn everything they can. Great poets forget everything they learned.
Gary B. Fitzgerald
P.S. Being an artist is not “a miserable enough prospect”. It’s a blessing. Not exactly comparable to the suffering of the saints, but a worthy hardship nonetheless.
I don't understand why SA gets so much air time. By his own admission and writing he knows very little about poetry and its traditions, his own poetry is derivative and cliche-ridden, and all one has to do is look at his blog and his interminable replies here to know that he's no editor. Why would anyone entrust an MFA application to him? He's crunched numbers (though his methodology is suspect)but that doesn't make him qualified to review a portfolio.
"So. She was raped on her
Powerpuff sheets. I mean, a real human heart." -Abramson
Good stuff and what I was surprised with was the notion of taking one's work (the kind that actually pays and has a set of values that is well known and regulated i.e. law) and making really good poetry out of it. It isn't easy to do and this is gritty material. A person who is able to do that obviously is a very intelligent person.
The ideas that Seth posits are worthy. The exclusionism that goes on isn't limited to this thing or that particular thing...poetry is by definition exclusionist if you ask me.
Seth is a visionary. Absolutely. He makes good arguments and probably would do so even if he wasn't a PD.
What bothers me is the "young" writers thing....what do you mean by that? Fourteen something lovestruck, idol conscious zombies?
In that I think Seth ought to be reminded that there is such a thing as old age.
Transformers. Heh. Good one.
Powerpuff sheets. I mean, a real human heart." -Abramson
Good stuff and what I was surprised with was the notion of taking one's work (the kind that actually pays and has a set of values that is well known and regulated i.e. law) and making really good poetry out of it. It isn't easy to do and this is gritty material. A person who is able to do that obviously is a very intelligent person.
The ideas that Seth posits are worthy. The exclusionism that goes on isn't limited to this thing or that particular thing...poetry is by definition exclusionist if you ask me.
Seth is a visionary. Absolutely. He makes good arguments and probably would do so even if he wasn't a PD.
What bothers me is the "young" writers thing....what do you mean by that? Fourteen something lovestruck, idol conscious zombies?
In that I think Seth ought to be reminded that there is such a thing as old age.
Transformers. Heh. Good one.
Seth is Sam Vaknin and ICMFP.
Seriously, I have no problem with his running private workshops by mail, though I wouldn't send anyone to him for prose. And if people are hellbent on throwing away tens of thousands of their own dollars on writing programs -- well, I just don't want to be responsible for helping to pull them out of a student-loan hole afterwards. What I do have a problem with is his & Chris's intimating that they can help applicants get into MFA programs, and charging money for it. That strikes me as fraudulent. There are dozens of program directors and whole grosses of app readers, and I do not see how Seth/Chris can have any idea what they're after, what their prejudices are, what speaks to them, what the university & internal politics at each program might be in a given year. My guess is rather that Seth & Chris will give advice that reflects their own aesthetics & preoccupations, which is what you'd expect in any workshop.
Jack Gilbert was right, by the way.
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Seriously, I have no problem with his running private workshops by mail, though I wouldn't send anyone to him for prose. And if people are hellbent on throwing away tens of thousands of their own dollars on writing programs -- well, I just don't want to be responsible for helping to pull them out of a student-loan hole afterwards. What I do have a problem with is his & Chris's intimating that they can help applicants get into MFA programs, and charging money for it. That strikes me as fraudulent. There are dozens of program directors and whole grosses of app readers, and I do not see how Seth/Chris can have any idea what they're after, what their prejudices are, what speaks to them, what the university & internal politics at each program might be in a given year. My guess is rather that Seth & Chris will give advice that reflects their own aesthetics & preoccupations, which is what you'd expect in any workshop.
Jack Gilbert was right, by the way.
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