I have a hard time imagining that poetry, which staggered along perfectly
well with only occasional patronage (in the US at least) for most of the
19th and twentieth centuries would shrivel up and die without MFA programs.
O'Hara and Ashbery managed to write a great deal of poetry while otherwise
employed. Whitman likewise, tho with less comfort. Also Niedecker. No need
to make a list--there were occasional university-based critics and scholars
who wrote poetry, but they didn't make a living teaching others how to do so.
What would probably disappear is the horde of wannabes--the third-rate New
York School poets bred by Kenneth Koch, the third-rate language poets
coming out of Buffalo, the third-rate mainstream poets coming out of Iowa.
Many have no real vocation. The hardship of having a day job would weed
that garden pretty quickly, as it always has in the past.
What strikes me in gatherings of younger poets (I find myself at a couple
of these a week now that I'm back in NY) is that after whatever reading the
conversation sounds a lot like the halls of the MLA--it's all career-talk,
and folks wearing the school ties maintaining alliances. So, one's MFA
cohort publishes one, gives one readings, jobs, etc. And nobody seems to be
talking about poetry.
Talking about poetry in informal settings was in fact the way people
learned in the past, from the Mermaid Tavern on. It took persistence and
determination, and it was often brutal. It seems to have worked at least as
well as the universities--there are an unprecedented number of people who
call themselves poets and an unprecedented number of venues in which to
publish. I'm not aware that there has been a significant increase in the
amount of work worth reading.
Mark
At 11:22 AM 1/21/2005, you wrote:
> I'm
> >not saying that artists should not be paid - far from it. Nor am I
> >suggesting that poets should not work in universities.
>
>Ok, and thanks for the clarification, Alison.
>
> >> Well, this arguing among poets
> >> about what to get rid of, whether we should get poetry booted from
> >> universities,
> >> or booted from funding by organizations because their reasons may be less
> >> than pure, etc, seems to me somewhat ridiculous.
> >
> >Who's saying this?
>
>Oh, I said it from a sort of overview of this thread, making logical
>extensions
>from the various arguments presented here. Bernstein argues
>against various venues that now exist for poets and poetry on the grounds that
>they 'water it down', i.e. dilute its purity; Gioia has argued against various
>venues that now exist for poets and poetry on the grounds that they are too
>suffocatingly elitist, i.e. ivory towers of academe and MFA programs and
>incomprehensible language poets. You seem to imply that deans and
>universities by viewing poetry, as they do _everything_ as part of a liberal
>education, devitalize it and create 'protective structures' that make Prynne
>possible, i.e. hothouses that cultivate a zygotic plant that could not exist
>elsewhere. If, by extension, we were to get rid of all of these things,
>there would
>be little left, few venues for poets or poetry. If poetry is a feral
>vocation, and I'm
>inclined to agree that it is, for whatever one does, whether milking goats or
>grading English papers or teaching a poetry workshop or writing in other
>modes, there is a certain ferality of being wild outside those particular
>modes,
>for none of them are writing poetry itself, the actual doing and process
>itself,
>but if it is such, I don't have a problem with there being any number of
>environments in which it may disguise itself, find the necessities of
>survival. I
>don't think the elimination of environments, however much they may be weeded
>over, trashed, marked by the casualties of erroneous architecture, will grant
>more strength or vitality to its feral life, but rather that the
>elimination of
>various environments would make it more difficult for that feral life to
>survive.
>I don't know, having felt enough feral in myself, for a number of reasons, I
>wonder what feral animal wants to be spotted and recognized? the whole point
>is not to be, if these environments were eliminated, these various
>impurities which afflict the proper recognition of poetry, it's just the
>cat in the
>headlights, extinction.
>
>Best,
>
>Rebecca
>---- Original message ----
> >Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:53:41 +1100
> >From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject: Re: down with the down with poetry crowd
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >On 21/1/05 5:00 PM, "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> Well, I'd guess it depends on what 'an academic" is, which is a second
> cousin
> >> to
> >> that insult heard in some circles of being an 'intellectual'.
> >
> >I meant simply someone who taught English in a university. Not,
> >incidentally, a writer, but someone for whom I hold a deal of respect.
> >
> >Someone like Prynne is inconceivable outside the protective structures of a
> >university. On the other hand, the idea of career structures or other
> >aspects of a "cultural industry" are highly problematic in the arts. I'm
> >not saying that artists should not be paid - far from it. Nor am I
> >suggesting that poets should not work in universities. I don't go in for
> >the popular sport of academic bashing. But nevertheless, there is something
> >feral about the vocation of poetry which ought to be respected and
> >recognised; it is a bad mistake to think of poetry solely as an aspect of a
> >liberal education.
> >
> >> Well, this arguing among poets
> >> about what to get rid of, whether we should get poetry booted from
> >> universities,
> >> or booted from funding by organizations because their reasons may be less
> >> than pure, etc, seems to me somewhat ridiculous.
> >
> >Who's saying this?
> >
> >Best
> >
> >A
> >
> >
> >
> >Alison Croggon
> >
> >Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> >Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> >Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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