For some time, though, art colleges haven't been especially strong on the teaching of technique (say the application of paint, the basics of which are quite easy to learn and are learnt to higher standards mainly through practice). My experience of art college classes long ago was that I profited from the hours spent working on something, and the atmosphere of encouragement as well as criticism. Mainly the atmosphere of undistracted attention. And surely something of that can be brought to writing classes.
I don't really see, in principal, why our earlier attainment of language skills should really have such impact on the model - besides children often learn to draw before they can read.
Just read Mairead's post which gives more interesting angles to the argument, so I'll sign off,
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Weiss
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: Never such innocents again
The analogy with arts colleges (meaning plastic arts) has been used in the US as well. It's not a very good analogy. On the simplest level, we all grow up using spoken language, and we're all trained in written language from an early age. We're all trained to read,as well. Which means that the tools are already available. Painting (to use one genre as an example) is very different. While those lucky enough and so inclined can attend museums, the basic techniques of applying paint to canvas are not universally available. That's why almost all painters since there have been professional painters have had studio training. Writers, for the most part, have been on their own. Shakespeare may have studied rhetoric, but he surely didn't take creative writing courses.
What may be analogous is the social and professional role of educational certification for artists.
Again, I'm not denying that there are great teachers in academic settings and students who greatly benefit from them. The issue is more the larger impact on the art.
Best,
Mark
At 11:00 AM 7/28/2010, you wrote:
Mark, your use of 'middle-class' - meaning relatively comfortable - was pretty clear. It was just its subsequent use I was (mildly) questioning. Compared to the oceanic MFA system you describe, it's still early days here, and here also I imagine some of the courses are well-taught, or taught by talented writers, which ought to make a difference. Though I see there are distinctions, the far longer established model of art colleges - an argument that must have been rehearsed again and again - should suggest there are teachable elements in writing...
Perhaps the cossetted and the uncossetted might be a more interesting divide between poets than the traditional/innovative one, and it wouldn't always follow the same contours.
Jamie
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Weiss
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: Never such innocents again
I didn't use "middle-class" in the sense in which anglophones use "bourgeois," but as opposed to the garret.
Of course teaching can have value, even teaching of "creative writing," tho I suspect that's rather the exception. But the problems are much larger. Poetry, never the hottest commodity, has been thoroughly marginalized by its apporpriation by the universities. It's an unfolding catastrophe for the arts in general but especially for so tremulous a flower as the art we practice. There are now, if I remember correctly, 500 odd creative writing programs and 20,000 MFAs in the past 10 years, and the pace of department formation is accelerating. Those MFAs need to publish for even the ghost of a chance at a teaching career, and a host of mostly trivial journals have sprung up to meet that need. And those who don't teach fill most of the entry-level positions at more-establushed presses and journals. Good, even wonderful, work, continues to be produced, but it's largely overwhelmed by the oceans of the at best adequate.
I've been, as a publisher, to two of the annual conventions of the Associated Writing Programs--four or five thousand conventioneers, like any other trade group, but hungrier. At a plumber's convention there's real interest in the latest technology. At AWP endless streams of MFAs and MFA candidates stream past the books, mostly without a glance, but always asking if I or another would like to see a manuscript. This with no interest in what the press purveys, no interest in whether it's appropriate. So great is the perceived need.
I tend to go on about this. Sorry.
It's all very sad.
At 01:05 PM 7/27/2010, you wrote:
Fair enough - but David it was you who brought up the Edwardian connection with the "current British poetry...scene". There are a great many more interesting things for all of us to contemplate than that, though I don't see why it should be alien to a list such as this.
The topic of Creative Writing's expansion in universities here, on the US model, isn't exactly engrossing either. I'm not sure, though, that the descriptor "middle-class" helps much in understanding it, or just says the obvious: teaching is traditionally described as a middle-class activity. Plus it solves the money problem. It doesn't mean that it can't have value.
As a (very) part-time teacher, I prefer to teach literature rather than writing, but I don't see the latter option as morally tainted. What worries me most about it is the potentially exclusionary effect of these degrees - that it becomes even harder to publish for those outside this institutional loop - with editorially well-connected poets recommending their graduates. (Again I don't see those recommendations as tainted - but quite a natural attempt to help young poets whose work the poet/teachers find promising.) But you'd hope that poetry would fight free of institutional governance. If this is what's meant by "middle-class" I wouldn't entirely disagree.
I fear Mark's right that these kind of degrees "will become the entry ticket". It may even already be the case.
Jamie
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