Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought MFA programs were
created to produce people who are more creative in writing
and/or the other arts. I've never thought of them as aiming
at producing teachers for MFA programs. I've never studied
or taught in one of these programs, so what do I know?
Hal Serving the tri-state area.
Halvard Johnson
================
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http://sites.google.com/site/halvardjohnson/Home
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
<http://www.hamiltonstone.org/>
*Obras Públicas<https://sites.google.com/site/vidalocabooks/halvard-johnson-obras-publicas>
; **The Perfection of Mozart's Third Eye and Other
Sonnets<http://www.scribd.com/doc/27039868/Halvard-Johnson-THE-PERFECTION-OF-MOZART-S-THIRD-EYE-Other-Sonnets>
;*
*Organ Harvest with Entrance of
Clones<http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Entrance-Clones-Halvard-Johnson/dp/0965404390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283182804&sr=8-1>
; **Tango Bouquet<https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATDp6rzKkBkhZGZwand2cHdfOWc1Mnh3Zw&hl=en>
; **Theory of Harmony<https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://xpressed.wippiespace.com/fall04/theory1.pdf>
; *
***Rapsodie espagnole<https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://xpressed.wippiespace.com/rapsodi.pdf>
; **Guide to the Tokyo
Subway<http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Tokyo-Subway-Other-Poems/dp/0971487316/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283183153&sr=1-3>
; **The Sonnet Project<https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://xpressed.wippiespace.com/hsonnet.pdf>
; *
***G(e)nome <http://xpressed.wippiespace.com/fall03/genome.pdf>; **Winter
Journey <http://capa.conncoll.edu/johnson.winter.html>;
**Eclipse<http://capa.conncoll.edu/johnson.eclipse.html>
; **The Dance of the Red Swan <http://capa.conncoll.edu/johnson.dance.html>;
*
*Transparencies & Projections <http://capa.conncoll.edu/johnson.transp.html>
*
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 8:07 AM, Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mark Young interviewed by Sheila E. Murphy at The Argotist Online:
> http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Young%20interview.htm
>
>
>
> Excerpt:
>
> Sheila E. Murphy: Your organizational and educational experiences seem to
> have contributed in a wide variety of ways, bringing on an artistic version
> of “deferred compensation.” Given your strong familiarity with the corporate
> world, the university environment, and the artistic sphere, please share
> your views on the possibility of bringing a wider range of people to poetry.
> Is this a fantasy, or is it possible in our current time?
>
> Mark Young: Let me go out on a limb here & say I believe we have already
> exceeded the upper limits of the poetic macrocosm, but because there are no
> regulations or restrictions, no fire marshalls standing at the entrances
> counting the numbers going in, it's going to keep on growing. For a while,
> anyway.
>
> Why has it grown so much? Population growth, obviously. More people, more
> poets. A world made smaller by technology, & with English the lingua franca
> we are now seeing Indian & Chinese & Ghanian poets writing in a second
> language as part of the everyday offerings. The exponential growth of
> publishing methodology which means more books, more cheaply. More
> magazines—duotrope's digest has around 3000 outlets listed. The growth of
> MFA programs in creative writing—this is going to be one of the first areas
> to go belly up. It's simple economics. People in these programs are trained
> only to become teachers of MFA programs in creative writing programs; there
> will soon be—if there isn't already—an oversupply of teachers; demand for
> the programs will drop off because there's no guarantee of a job on the
> other side; & bums on seats is the guiding principle of academia these days.
>
> So it may seem we have opposing points of view, you wanting to bring more
> people, me saying there are already too many. But I think we both have
> caveats attached, qualifiers perhaps; & what we're both moving towards is
> how do we attract more people—whether already in the macrocosm or still to
> come—to the type of poetry we care about, to that part of it we both adhere
> to.
>
> Let me step outside the sphere of poetics for a moment & quote from a book
> that is a cornerstone of my library, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of
> Scientific Revolutions. In it Kuhn puts forward his beliefs as to why
> certain bodies of thought, often exemplified by specific texts, provided the
> impetus to change the way particular fields of science were pursued, the way
> what he called "paradigm shifts" came about:
>
> They were able to do so because they shared two essential characteristics.
> Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring
> group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity.
> Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of
> problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
>
> I'll explain why I think Kuhn is relevant. To me, poetics, like politics,
> has a reasonably revolutionary left wing & a conservative right. &, again
> like politics, it is the left that is full of schisms. Yet the left wing has
> a history as strong as that that the right professes to. But these days its
> impact is diminished because it's splintered. I have fairly eclectic &
> wide-ranging tastes, but when I came back to poetry I found that if I wanted
> to read one group of poets I liked I had to go here, & if I wanted to read
> another group I had to go there, & another elsewhere, & if I wanted to
> see/read vispo, then I had to go searching in 100 places. & yet they're all
> essentially related even though sometimes the bloodlines are denied.
>
> Back to Kuhn. We have the "enduring group of adherents"; we have the
> open-endedness; what we don't have is a sense of the commonality that
> actually does exist even though many practioners spend a deal of time
> turning the minor differences into unbridgeable chasms. Somehow we have to
> bring things back together again, to show the breadth & the strength of the
> left even if the house has many mansions. I think that by doing that we will
> attract a wider & better-informed audience. It's what I've tried to do with
> Otoliths. […] I think I am succeeding in bringing things back together
> again, to show the breadth & the strength of the left even if the house has
> many mansions.
>
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