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

[Mark Weiss]

Right, the amount of work required to demonstrate that poetry is 
either worse or better or more constrained in general than heretofore 
is simply inconceivable. There's surely more formulaic crap out there 
than before because there's more being written and published. Whether 
it represents a larger percentage of the whole is another matter. But 
wouldn't the burden of proof be on the new system, given that the 
English language has been efficiently filling libraries for a 
millennium before the advent of writing programs?

Hall's formal education as a poet consisted of a couple of weeks at 
Bread Loaf, by the way.

I'll try again. There are wonderful writers teaching in MFA programs 
and a lot of not so good writers. Some of their students will 
undoubtedly become wonderful writers and go on to teach, though few 
of them will have differentiated themselves enough from the pack by 
their mid-twenties for the superior quality of their presumed 
eventual output to be much of a hiring criterion. Even if every MFA 
was a great writer, however, the problem of the limitation of 
experience and audience would remain.

You do realize that we're arguing about a very recent phenomenon. 
Iowa was all alone for a long time. In the sixties there was a growth 
spurt in the industry, but most programs are probably less than 
thirty years old. If I'm off by a decade it's still a very new thing.

At 11:10 AM 7/3/2009, you wrote:
>Also, the "standardization" charge is meaningless without 
>illustration. Furthermore, if one wanted to argue rather than merely 
>assert it, that would require some effort.  Certainly it would 
>require more than citing a bland poem or three, since mediocrity is 
>the default mode of all poetry in every era.
>
>For decades now I've read many essays lamenting the sad state of 
>contemporary poetry without finding one that did more than blow 
>generalized smoke, or at best reiterate the eternal truth that 
>genius remains rare.
>
>Donald Hall (a couple decades ago now) reminded us how these "poetry 
>is dying" essays have always been with us, interestingly enough 
>citing examples from the early 20th century by critics who could not 
>recognize the greatness of the real geniuses writing at that time.
>
>Hall believes that what motivates such diatribes is often a Golden 
>Age mentality. Poetry was always "better" back in some vaguely 
>remembered prior era--an opinion that is hard to maintain if one 
>actually hauls out the journals of 1918 or 1818, searching for the 
>wheat amid all the chaff.
>
>
>
>
>
>David Graham
><mailto:Grahamd at Ripon.edu>Grahamd at Ripon.edu
>------------------------
>Home page:
><http://web.mac.com/drjazz>http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>
>On Jul 3, 2009, at 9:31 AM, 
>"<mailto:AlMaginnes at aol.com>AlMaginnes at aol.com" 
><<mailto:AlMaginnes at aol.com>AlMaginnes at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>Like I said before, Mark, you're making the same arguments that 
>>have been made for years. Which might hold some water if all these 
>>academic professors you deride wrote the same kind of poetry. If 
>>you are as tuned into poetry as you claim to be you should be aware 
>>of the incredible diversity of styles out there.
>>
>>
>>----------
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