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The Malaysian Flying Academy can't we make it this one instead? but which one did you make up? I'd guess Middle-earth Feoffee Alliance ? best, Rebecca ---- Original message ---- >Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 10:51:38 +0100 >From: MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Re: down with the down with poetry crowd >To: [log in to unmask] > >Excuse me, I feel really dumb - but I've been reading all these knowing >comments on MFA & its courses for some time now, but just what the hell >is MFA? Google tells me : >Museum for Fine Art, Mutuelle Fraternelle d'Assurance, the Israeli >Government's official website, various Ministries of Foreign Affairs, >Middle-earth Feoffee Alliance, Malta Football Association & Music for >America, >MFA Incorporated (farm supply), Medical Facilities of America, MFA The >Global Voice for the Alternative Investment Industry, Midwest Finance >Association, The Malaysian Flying Academy, MFA Mortgage Investments Inc. >My best guess is Master of Fine Arts. What a weird title, if this is true! >mj - who made up one of the above, natch > >Mark Weiss wrote: > >> I have a hard time imagining that poetry, which staggered along perfectly >> well with only occasional patronage (in the US at least) for most of the >> 19th and twentieth centuries would shrivel up and die without MFA >> programs. >> O'Hara and Ashbery managed to write a great deal of poetry while >> otherwise >> employed. Whitman likewise, tho with less comfort. Also Niedecker. No >> need >> to make a list--there were occasional university-based critics and >> scholars >> who wrote poetry, but they didn't make a living teaching others how to >> do so. >> >> What would probably disappear is the horde of wannabes--the third-rate >> New >> York School poets bred by Kenneth Koch, the third-rate language poets >> coming out of Buffalo, the third-rate mainstream poets coming out of >> Iowa. >> Many have no real vocation. The hardship of having a day job would weed >> that garden pretty quickly, as it always has in the past. >> >> What strikes me in gatherings of younger poets (I find myself at a couple >> of these a week now that I'm back in NY) is that after whatever >> reading the >> conversation sounds a lot like the halls of the MLA--it's all >> career-talk, >> and folks wearing the school ties maintaining alliances. So, one's MFA >> cohort publishes one, gives one readings, jobs, etc. And nobody seems >> to be >> talking about poetry. >> >> Talking about poetry in informal settings was in fact the way people >> learned in the past, from the Mermaid Tavern on. It took persistence and >> determination, and it was often brutal. It seems to have worked at >> least as >> well as the universities--there are an unprecedented number of people who >> call themselves poets and an unprecedented number of venues in which to >> publish. I'm not aware that there has been a significant increase in the >> amount of work worth reading. >> >> Mark >> >> >> At 11:22 AM 1/21/2005, you wrote: >> >>> I'm >>> >not saying that artists should not be paid - far from it. Nor am I >>> >suggesting that poets should not work in universities. >>> >>> Ok, and thanks for the clarification, Alison. >>> >>> >> Well, this arguing among poets >>> >> about what to get rid of, whether we should get poetry booted from >>> >> universities, >>> >> or booted from funding by organizations because their reasons may >>> be less >>> >> than pure, etc, seems to me somewhat ridiculous. >>> > >>> >Who's saying this? >>> >>> Oh, I said it from a sort of overview of this thread, making logical >>> extensions >>> from the various arguments presented here. Bernstein argues >>> against various venues that now exist for poets and poetry on the >>> grounds that >>> they 'water it down', i.e. dilute its purity; Gioia has argued >>> against various >>> venues that now exist for poets and poetry on the grounds that they >>> are too >>> suffocatingly elitist, i.e. ivory towers of academe and MFA programs and >>> incomprehensible language poets. You seem to imply that deans and >>> universities by viewing poetry, as they do _everything_ as part of a >>> liberal >>> education, devitalize it and create 'protective structures' that make >>> Prynne >>> possible, i.e. hothouses that cultivate a zygotic plant that could >>> not exist >>> elsewhere. If, by extension, we were to get rid of all of these things, >>> there would >>> be little left, few venues for poets or poetry. If poetry is a feral >>> vocation, and I'm >>> inclined to agree that it is, for whatever one does, whether milking >>> goats or >>> grading English papers or teaching a poetry workshop or writing in other >>> modes, there is a certain ferality of being wild outside those >>> particular >>> modes, >>> for none of them are writing poetry itself, the actual doing and process >>> itself, >>> but if it is such, I don't have a problem with there being any number of >>> environments in which it may disguise itself, find the necessities of >>> survival. I >>> don't think the elimination of environments, however much they may be >>> weeded >>> over, trashed, marked by the casualties of erroneous architecture, >>> will grant >>> more strength or vitality to its feral life, but rather that the >>> elimination of >>> various environments would make it more difficult for that feral life to >>> survive. >>> I don't know, having felt enough feral in myself, for a number of >>> reasons, I >>> wonder what feral animal wants to be spotted and recognized? the >>> whole point >>> is not to be, if these environments were eliminated, these various >>> impurities which afflict the proper recognition of poetry, it's just >>> the >>> cat in the >>> headlights, extinction. >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Rebecca >>> ---- Original message ---- >>> >Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:53:41 +1100 >>> >From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> >>> >Subject: Re: down with the down with poetry crowd >>> >To: [log in to unmask] >>> > >>> >On 21/1/05 5:00 PM, "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>> > >>> >> Well, I'd guess it depends on what 'an academic" is, which is a >>> second >>> cousin >>> >> to >>> >> that insult heard in some circles of being an 'intellectual'. >>> > >>> >I meant simply someone who taught English in a university. Not, >>> >incidentally, a writer, but someone for whom I hold a deal of respect. >>> > >>> >Someone like Prynne is inconceivable outside the protective >>> structures of a >>> >university. On the other hand, the idea of career structures or other >>> >aspects of a "cultural industry" are highly problematic in the >>> arts. I'm >>> >not saying that artists should not be paid - far from it. Nor am I >>> >suggesting that poets should not work in universities. I don't go >>> in for >>> >the popular sport of academic bashing. But nevertheless, there is >>> something >>> >feral about the vocation of poetry which ought to be respected and >>> >recognised; it is a bad mistake to think of poetry solely as an >>> aspect of a >>> >liberal education. >>> > >>> >> Well, this arguing among poets >>> >> about what to get rid of, whether we should get poetry booted from >>> >> universities, >>> >> or booted from funding by organizations because their reasons may >>> be less >>> >> than pure, etc, seems to me somewhat ridiculous. >>> > >>> >Who's saying this? >>> > >>> >Best >>> > >>> >A >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> >Alison Croggon >>> > >>> >Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com >>> >Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au >>> >Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com >> >>