Re: [New-Poetry] An Era of Détente for Creative-Writing Programs

[jforjames at aol.com]

Richard Hugo's  early and good defense of Creative Writing programs (from The Triggering Town).... 
http://adilegian.com/hugodefensecreativewriting.htm

"A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time. Writing is tough, and many wrong paths can be taken. If we are doing our job, creative-writing teachers are performing a necessary negative function. And if we are good teachers, we should be teaching the writer ways of doing that for himself all his writing life. We teach how not to write and we teach writers to teach themselves how not to write. When we teach how to write, the student had best be on guard."

-----Original Message-----
From: Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at gmail.com>
Sent: Thu, Jul 2, 2009 2:34 pm
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] An Era of Détente for Creative-Writing Programs


I really don't know if my mail last night made it to the list, it was late, I was sleepy, I saved to send it today, but could not find it any more.
I wanted to say, and I said that _even if I sweated all I could sweat, I loved my MFA program, and as soon as I finished it, I asked Bill Lavender if I could do it all over again. I also took two extra courses which were regularly graded. I loved all the courses except one but because of the professor. We had no feeling one for the other. 
It hasn't physically taken me anywhere, as a matter I am still here doing the absolutely same things. I am terribly sorry it ended, I feel void, as if I did not have an ideal an
y more.
I paid for my MFA, for my books, trips and everything. I am proud of myself. I feel it gave me just so much that I cannot even know which words to use to describe what I feel.

My best, Anny


On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:48 PM, <almaginnes at aol.com> wrote:

I teach in a community college so the MFA gig looks impossibly sweet and unattainable to me (one day I will post my long and bitter ran about this). In hte reading series I run, I make it a point to only get folks who want to be there. Anyone who acts like a CC is beneath htem goes off hte list immeditely. I might add that over the years, we've had some pretty impressive folks--three Kinglsy Tufts winners, one Pulitzer winner, many others with major prizes and publications.  One of the beauties of my campus is that with hte exception of me and one or two others, thsoe prizes and honros mean nothing, so readers are judged on their ability ot connect with the students.  As ot should be.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu>
Sent: Thu, Jul 2, 2009 12:09 pm
Subject: [New-Poetry] An Era of Détente for Creative-Writing Programs


Yes.  While I don't teach in an MFA program, I imagine it's irksome to be lectured on how cushy and safe one's life is by someone who skims off the cream of the university creative writing system while shouldering no institutional commitments or responsibilities--never teaching big sophomore lit classes or freshman comp; never chairing a department or fa
culty committee; never advising or counseling students; never writing letters of recommendation; never serving on institutional task forces or search committees; and, of course, never organizing the visiting writers'20series which provides the blowhard in question the platform for such lofty dismissals. 










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