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 -----
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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