Hey Malcolm--nice to have you back! Just a quick response to your
Iowa/Graham/langpo query, and from my own "constrained perspectivism"
(Nietzsche on the brain today!): I did time at Iowa (John Irving's locution)
as an undergrad in the early '70s and departed (at Larry Levis's
insistence--for my own good, to do my MFA at UMASS) before Graham's advent.
But I don't doubt that Jim's right to give her credit for moving the program
forward and not least by recognizing langpo's potential to become
mainstream, as I think it has since the '80s. The Iowa program in the early
'70s was a very odd mix of brilliant grad students like Larry and Denis
Johnson (and Merle Kessler/"Ian Shoals," who was doing a combined
fiction/playwrighting degree under Gail Godwin's direction), many visiting
celebs. (Stanley Plumly was the last one doing such a stint before I left),
and a tenured faculty that included Marvin Bell (what is there to say?) and,
on the fiction side, the late Lord of the Deadwood (bar) Fred Exley. My
impression from talking to people whose experience of the program included
Graham is very much in line with Jim's account--what I heard over and over
again was that she made it both exciting and coherent, and it made me wish I
could have been there then before moving on to the different pleasures of an
MFA program that included Jim Tate and J. D. Reed, among others. Those who
came after me at UMASS, like David Graham, can say what a different turn it
took under Madeline DeFrees [sp.?] direction versus Don Junkins's. (David,
are you there?)
Candice
on 8/2/01 11:43 AM, Malcolm Phillips at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hi everybody, as Dr. Nick from The Simpsons would say. Just rejoined the
> list yesterday after a lengthy break.
>
> Good to hear mention of Harriet Zinne's poems - it sent me back to
> Entropisms, which resonates anew as I just got hold of Stein's 'Tender
> Buttons' last week - some of the American heritage becomes clearer for this
> limey reader.
>
> A question / reservation to raise about Finnegan's words on Jorie Graham's
> role at Iowa. Did you do the MFA yourself, Finnegan? did anyone else here?
> because I'd be interested to know what people think about langpo techniques
> being 'adapted' to mainstream poetics. I seem to remember something like
> this being discussed _somewhere_ a while back and someone told a story
> about Lyn Hejinian getting quite upset at langpo techniques being co-opted,
> saying something like 'language poetry isn't a _style_.' What do people
> think about this? Can you _responsibly_ adapt the techniques of a school
> without engaging with the political and social implications of the poetic
> as a way of life, as a way of having poetry as part of a living continuum
> rather than as a professionalised, specialised activity? if not, is there
> an argument for abandoning poetry writing programs in favour of programs
> that actively encourage people to develope wider notions of poetics and
> approach?
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