Workshops and writing programs are different things. I was
commenting, as I thought were you, on workshops within writing
programs. I was pretty precise about that, as evidenced by my use of
the term "writing programs." Perhaps I extrapolated incorrectly from
your reference to art schools. Workshops can of course be wonderfully
useful. Early on I was a member of a couple of workshops. And poets
have been getting together to discuss their work for as long as there
have been poets.
One of the books I devoured as a child was my parents' copy of John
Untermeyer's Modern British and American Poetry (the 1944 edition),
the Norton of its day, which gave a brief nod to proximate forebears
(Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy) and then marched resolutely through the
first decades of the 20th century. It never occurred to me (hey, I
was a kid) or to anyone else, I think, that there was anything
unusual about the number of women represented from 1920 onwards--some
45 percent of the American section. I've never had occasion to count
the British section, and god knows where the book is now. The writers
from a later generation that you name are part of the efflorescence.
Anyone should be able to list a bunch of others.
I may have been the only kid in Brooklyn writing cinquains in the
early fifties.
Best,
Mark
At 09:01 AM 8/11/2009, you wrote:
>Quite imprecise, Mark. If you read D. G. Myers' The Elephants
>Teach, you will see that workshops are closer to 80 years old; also
>you can read his arguments about how literary criticism facilitated
>both workshops and the participation of women, if I remember
>correctly. Even in popular imagination, only 60 years ago, Sylvia
>Plath and Ann Sexton, both took Robert Lowell's workshop, as I have
>a hunch Adrienne Rich did. I've no idea what you mean by a term so
>general as "great efflorescence," but both statements which follow
>are mistaken. But what's the point arguing with you? None in the world.
>Mairead
>
>On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:55 AM, Mark Weiss
><<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>There was a great efflorescence of women poets in the 20th century,
>Mairead, almost none of whom had anything to do with writing
>programs, which are with very few exceptions only a couple of
>decades old (as is their dominance), or pubs, for that matter.
>
>Mark
>
>
>
>
>At 08:56 PM 8/10/2009, you wrote:
>Come to think of it, Blake shouldn't have bothered his barney going
>to art school either. But then poetry isn't an art or a craft or a
>skill or a trade (what the heck is it...?). No, the pub is the only
>writing workshop we need boys. Who on earth would want a more
>structured approach to the whole thing? Women with children? As if
>they can write poetry ....let them do pottery. Which is an art and
>a craft and a skill and a trade, unlike poetry.
>Mairead
>
>On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Carrie Etter
><<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Some of these comments about workshops sound like they're based more
>on supposition and hearsay than numerous, varied experiences. Ulli
>Freer used to--does he still?--run a workshop at Birkbeck which I
>heard was anything but dictatorial and didactic, and I've got to say
>the workshops I run at Bath Spa do anything but espouse convention
>and conformity (which could be didactic in itself, if you consider
>the general initiative toward originality to be didactic). Different
>instructors have different approaches, of course, and I despise the
>general category referred to earlier as "domestic realism" (which I
>find still painfully rampant), but I don't think the workshop itself
>is at fault so much as individual instructors' attitudes toward their purpose.
>
>
>
>Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:28:52 +0100
>From: Jeffrey Side <<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]>
>
>Subject: Re: Found a good article called 'POETRY SCENE: CURRENT DIFFICULTIES'
>
>Tim, needless to say I agree with you. I find that workshops tend to be r=
>un by=20
>poetic dictators who are more concerned with peddling their own ideas of=20=
>
>what a poem is than trying to facilitate genuine curiosity in the people=20=
>
>they "teach". It is this didactical element that I find disturbing, and e=
>xplains=20
>why (as you say) workshops have had such a big influence on poetry in=20
>Britain.=20
>
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