On those terms he probably would be. The point is, not so much that
poets don't need some sort of learning, but rather how they should get
it.
On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:06:51 -0400, mairead byrne
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Yeah, and I wonder was Shakespeare's "small Latin & less Greek" the
16th
>century equivalent of "the guy doesn't even have an MFA."
>Actually though, I do believe the stakes are real, and very high, for
>poetry. The law, more than creative writing programs, maintains its
>mediocracy (I love PBS but find the conjunction of "unacknowledged"
and
>"legislators" to be neutralizing.
>Old druid that I am, I believe implicitly in the power of words. But I
>don't think I'm romantic.
>Mairead
>
>On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
>> I can see David’s point when he observes that the stakes are low
when
>> it comes to the practical ramifications of failed artistic practices.
>> Certainly, no reader has been injured physically from reading a bad
>> poem. Nevertheless, many degree-level disciplines in the humanities
>> and wider arts subjects are similarly risk-free. Does this, then, mean
>> that they should not be catered for at degree-level?
>>
>> Poetry does have certain skill-sets required in its writing, as anyone
>> who has had to sit through endless lectures on prosody will tell you.
>> True, prosody is, perhaps, now a defunct skill in poetic writing but it
is
>> a skill all the same, as much as that of any involved in musical
>> composition. To the extent that creative writing degree-level courses
>> teach this (along with, hopefully, the historical and theoretical
>> components in the study of literature) then an analogy with degree-
>> level courses in music can apply.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:27:20 -0700, David Latane
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> >Here are a few more probably pompous observations. I wasn't
making
>> an analogy, per se, between jazz and the totality of poetry--but
trying
>> to answer Mairead's query about whether there was any meaningful
>> distinction between "creative writing" in the academy and training in
>> music, architecture and other fields. One of the distinctions for me is
>> that formal training (apprenticeship, guild, academy) in many
>> artistic/craft fields came long before the granting of degrees for
writing
>> poetry for practical reasons. There were skills and techniques in
working
>> with materials that required practice and training--whether playing
the
>> piano, or engraving a copperplate, or cutting a dovetail. And there
was
>> a market for certified practitioners. Poetry writing was different.
>> >I think there are big differences between slam poetry (or any
language
>> creation) and jazz. People with a certain hutzpa and no practice at
all
>> can stand up at a slam and make an impact. People with a certain
>> hutzpa introduced to the piano or saxophone a few days before can't
>> even begin to rip through a few Charlie Parker tunes (with significant
>> variations) without having hard glassy objects thrown at them.
>> >Architecture that gets built requires certain trained skills.
>> When "things fall apart" (Yeats) in poetry "nothing happens"
(Auden).
>> When things fall apart on a construction site people are killed and
>> money is lost. Poets' imaginations are free--no telos. Writing for an
>> MFA degree or any other degree requires the end of getting the
degree
>> to qualify (hopefully temporarily) this freedom. Architects can
imagine
>> freely too -- but the vast majority of them sit a tables in big firms
>> figuring out how to decorate a box more cheaply. They pay for Pei to
>> play. So I wasn't dismissing any architects--but commenting on a
fact,
>> based on a goodly acquaintance with what their actually working
>> conditions are like. Only a few are ever given a pile of money and
told
>> to make something beautiful.
>> >"But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible
>> order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the
>> dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the
>> institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the
>> inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a
>> certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial
>> apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is
>> called religion." Shelley--Defence
>> >
>> >
>> >David Latane
>> > http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine, Leeds)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
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