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Douglas Barbour writes: <<Which 'academia'? What 'staid strictures'? I am sure I make such huge generalizations too often, myself, but in this case, I think a bit of contextualization might help. Just a bit...?>> Yeah, Doug, I tell you, it's hard being a member of the ruling class, but somebody has to keep the poetry peasants down on the farm in Poetryland. Actually, not many people know that the MFA degree confers magical powers on its recipients. We're capable of making non-MFA's poems disappear in the mail, for instance. Why, we can . . . well, I've already said too much--I'm sure to be brought up on charges for revealing trade secrets. Really, what loads of nonsense has been written about the MFA. Jon Corelis offered a statistical conjecture recently about what nine out of ten poets would do. Let me offer another: Have someone pick for you ten poems randomly and anonymously from a selection of recent literary journals, then give yourself the test of choosing which poems were written by MFA holders, which not. After you're done, check the biographical notes or call the poets on the phone to discover the nature of their education. I'll offer ten bucks to the first person who can do better than a standard deviation from the actual number. ====================== Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts, box 5750 Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 315.268.3967 [log in to unmask] http://web.northnet.org/duemer http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html ====================== Sing so dogs bark, oxen bolt, So a girl walks out on her lover. Sing so dogs bark, bulls bellow, So the old coot crawls out of his hut. [Mekong Delta 1971, trans. John Balaban] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%