.
I fully realize that it's easy for me to criticize when I'm not writing poems myself, because when I write, it's mostly like wading through a self-generated disaster zone. Poetry is mostly false starts and abortions, but you wouldn't know it from the self-congratulatory chatter of the poetry crowd.
One more thought: the workshop format is obviously bullshit, since a poem cannot be audience tested or written by a commitee. The word itself, workshop, is ridiculous as applied to poetry. If this entire system isn't unraveling, I'm sure the next evolution in the poetry writing racket will be assembly line poetry:
Good at metaphor but clueless at syntax? Don't worry, we'll plug you into the right slot at the South Dakota/Oracle/Beige University MFA Poetry Assembly Line System. We'll "teach" you how to generate endless bizarre yet apt metaphors while never having to worry about periods, commas, clauses or any of that other grammatical bullshit. We already know you can't even compose a coherent email, but don't worry, you'll be a certified poet soon enough, with your own well-linked blog. Bank loans readily available for all qualified or unqualified sensitive and intellectually ravenous, sort of, suckers.
.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Another email to a youngish poet
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hola, It's Io
- An essay by Susan M. Schultz
- Interviewed by Matthew Sharpe
- Interviewed by Phạm Thị Hoài (in Vietnamese)
- Audio file of an interview by Leonard Schwartz
- Audio files on Pennsound
- YouTube videos
- Posts at the Harriet Blog
- Free Love Pix
- Two poems at Green Integer
- Two poems on Mipoesia
- Two prose poems in Jacket
- Poems translated into Arabic by Tahseen al Khateeb
- A short story in Jacket
- Eight Vietnamese poets translated into English
- Seven Contemporary Italian Poets
- A translation of Roberto Castillo Udiarte's "Vita Canis"
Followers
Bouncer, Janus, Bellhop
Choice Verbiage
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
16 comments:
If you don't mind me asking, did you become a poet before it required a expensive degree . Like a wrote a poem a while back ;
"Dream I had of a life
Life not defined as a series of transactions.
Or rolls of dice .
But just as is .
Something I didn't pick or chose .
Life is that.
A gamble , chance , fate
Mistakes ,
out of film when I need just one more take .
Yet I ask
What good would another take be
Same director, same actors same set .
Same plot .
Same 3 possibilities .
Yet I want that second take
As if it's needed to
See the winning numbers then play .
Just to have something to save .
3 outcomes
1. Unknown, unclear, vague, just ok
2. Lost
3 Won
It's all the same .
I designed my own cage .
Imprisoned by my own ways .
Fearing any outcome other then 1.
Freedom means nothing to I who doesn't seek change .
"
But its sooo horrible, I think I may need to go to Full-sail, for the low price of 75k( for a 2 year degree) and once I have my creative writing degree i'll be able to write REAL poems.
You forgot the wine and cheese again. And whiskey for the Dylan Thomasesque bards.
Hi Ksou,
The MFA writing racket was in full swing when I was in college, but one does not need expensive degrees to become a poet, only to teach. In fact, many poetry professors are lousy poets, or no poets at all, though their students don't know that.
Students make lots of money for these programs, so the primary job of these so called professors is to flatter the students, keep them paying that tuition with loan money. Some students do go to school for free, so they're not being hustled out of cash, but they're still swiming in that smarmy and dishonest atmosphere. As I said in a lecture at Penn, many poets praise everybody, people above and below them, because that's how you gain allies.
Again, there is no correlation between an expensive degree and becoming a poet. In many cases, it's the exact opposite. MFA programs are theme parks at best, and factory farms at worst.
If you want to be a writer, then study the works of the best writers.
Learn from Vallejo, not some unctuous and insecure poser at some college. You'll learn by reading and rereading, by writing, and by living and mixing with ordinary people.
Get out of the theme park and, short of getting killed or raped, go to the wrong neighborhood and enter the wrong bar. Listen carefully to how people talk. If you can't get a poem out of that, then maybe you're not a poet after all.
Hi Ksou,
I should clarify that I didn't go to school for writing but for painting, and I left college early because I decided that, if one wants to paint, why not just paint? Why pay money to learn from failed painters?
I quit painting because I couldn't afford it. It costs a hundred bucks to produce a painting, and you have to generate a bunch of paintings to luck into a half-decent one. If you have any talent, that is.
I also quit painting to focus on writing. In college, I took one semester in poetry writing, and that's the whole of my formal writing education. From this professor, I learnt how NOT to write.
I've published three books of fiction, and I never studied fiction writing in college, thank god. My fiction teachers are Borges, Kafka, Celine and Nguyen Huy Thiep, among many others.
I've been in the wrong bar at the wrong time with you, Linh. It's been a poem to have survived.
Yo Joe,
As soon as you or I walk in, it's the wrong bar.
dont pay for poems ksou
dead horses and soft snow drifts
are the only wiffs you need to keep
on adjudicated and free
Thanks for the tips , Linh . I'm actually not a writing major.( My post about full sail was meant as a joke ) . I'm a Political Science major ( even though game theory is making me sick to my stomach ) although the job prospects are just as bad.
I've noticed that alot, if not most college students( and this often extends into adulthood) are sheltered from the outside world . They don't want to go into the wrong bar, or talk to the many homeless who are getting more and more common . But I find that the homeless, forgotten, or to quote Fake House "The Unchosen " have the best stories to tell .
I thought you had to be an alcoholic manic depressive to be a good write, suicidally depressed to be a great writer.
Ray Bradbury once told me to "write, just write, as much as you can about everything."
BTW Blood and Soap is pretty good, for an America-basher...
Linh, thanks for this. Very necessary thought-jolt. I worry about these poor young kids enrolling. I'm just a little worried too though about opposing to this model a bar-talk Rimbaldian "déreglement des sens" model, which seems also sometimes tropological and limited... I'll say a little more on my blog. Kind thoughts from Paris,
Nick
Yo Nick,
I wish we had more time to hang out in Paris that one time. I was exhausted, so I wasn't all there, but it was a lot of fun. Hopefully there will be more opportunities like that in the future.
Linh
No problem Linh, was an absolute pleasure! I'm looking forward to having a beer with you in Philly one day, when I'll be the jetlagged one I promise you. Nick
Nick ,
It gets worse though , at my school a strange combination of rising enrollment and cuts to classes means that most students will take an extra year or 2 . Of course those extra years will cost 13k( im guessing higher since they raise it once a year ) each , plus other cost. So many students end up with 40-50k plus in debt... and this is a STATE SCHOOL .
I'm in my first quarter and I'm already sickened by what feels like exploitation . It would be ok if state schools weren't businesses at this point,( anyone who wants to disagree with me on this, tell how charging 1400$ a for half a room and some foods isn't exploration ).
I hear of a time long ago , when state school was free .
Hi Ksou,
I visited UC Santa Cruz last year, and was told of the high rents charged for dorm rooms. To avoid these, some students lived in trailers in the woods, but then they had to pay the school for being in this forest. This was on top of buying a used trailer, of course.
As colleges continue to jack up tuitions, and students become more broke, I can see tents mushrooming on campuses across this land, a sort of occupy your own school as you try to get a suspect education.
Linh
Hi Linh
I remember when UC Santa Cruz sent me their housing info last spring . Its like 500$ a month for a spot , and no tents . It must be an approved camper automobile. Everytime I think the world can't get any crazzer , it does .
And it doesn't matter if you want to go and study in a country with a lower cost of living then the US . One Semester aboard with the UC system in Hanoi cost 12k . This does include the flight, but Christ you'd think i'd be a little cheaper then that .Go to Ghana( where the average income is 2,500 a year) and you'll pay 14k for a semester of UC study aboard program .
Post a Comment