[New-Poetry] M(opes) F(arting) A(round)

[Anny Ballardini]

Did David invent the title? You know how to write David.
I am all pro MFA, PHD, anything. I support those who are studying, whatever 
the topic whatever the circumstance.

this my position,

Anny

From: "TheOldMole" <tad at opus40.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 6:33 PM


> What is the MFA aesthetic, exactly? Marvin Bell tells me that Iowa, all 
> the MFA students are writing like Bob Grumman and Geof Huth.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Graham" <grahamd at ripon.edu>
> To: "NewPoetry" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 11:53 AM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] M(opes) F(arting) A(round)
>
>
>> Today's thought on this always acrid subject:
>>
>> What are poets who complain about the whole constellation of things that
>> parade under the label "MFA" actually complaining about?  Are they saying
>> that they're being prevented from writing what they want to write?
>> Obviously not.  Are they upset because there are no experimental journals
>> that offer alternative views and aesthetics?  Well, if so, they're wrong.
>> The web is rich with non-MFA-originated poetry.  And even if such 
>> naysayers
>> were right, no one's actually preventing them from giving it a go and 
>> seeing
>> if their kind of poetry attracts readership, etc.  (Many are doing just
>> that, naturally.)
>>
>> So what such folks seem to be most exercised about is that the MFA 
>> aesthetic
>> is *popular*. (Oh, let's just assume for a moment that there is such a
>> thing, and--what's harder--that we could conceivably agree on what that 
>> is.)
>> Major journals, writers' conferences, and other institutional outlets for
>> poetry are dominated by "MFA poetry."
>>
>> OK.  But, hmmm.. . . that popularity thing.  It appears to mean that lots 
>> of
>> people gravitate toward it, for what else is a mainstream but the place
>> where most of the fish hang out?  Or--horrible thought--said fish may
>> *pretend* to swim in the mainstream, for reasons of naked careerism.
>> Or--even more horrible--may be brainwashed out of their right minds by 
>> the
>> omnipresence of mediocre role models!  All to enjoy the MFA "career." 
>> Oh,
>> it gets worse & worse. . . .  In any case, the existence of the whole
>> MFA-track is an institutionalization of bad poetry, is the argument.
>>
>> So what we're actually talking about here is not aesthetics so much as
>> "careers"--a laughable enough notion in the realm of poetry, anyway, but 
>> let
>> that pass.  And the MFA-bashers are, in fact, irked that they're being
>> excluded from the goodies--jobs, royalties, attention by Helen Vendler,
>> publication by Knopf, whatever.
>>
>> Yet if NFA poets wrote the sort of thing that was, er, popular, they
>> wouldn't be so excluded.  So such complaints may boil down to the 
>> following:
>> a yearning to *be* popular without having to write the sort of thing that
>> many "mainstream" readers actually enjoy reading.
>>
>> It's a nice adolescent fantasy.
>>
>>
>>
>> ====================================================
>> David Graham
>> grahamd at ripon.edu
>> Home Page:
>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
>> Poetry Library:
>> http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
>> ====================================================