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)
>
>
>
|