> I like Creeley's dictum: "I am given to writing poems." No further claim to
> virtue or utility required.
Many are called - or, at least manage to pay tuition - but few are
ultimately chosen. Or, have to wait quite a while for 'their time to come.'
In the "mean" time, many of the skills (if not the temperament!) are
transferable in healthy ways. Poets may or may not make more interesting,
imaginative teachers, forensic specialists, etc.
I am saying an MFA is a kind of education that may or may not sophisticate
'the gift of writing poems', but one whose discipline may fit well, in fact,
sometimes brilliantly, into the needs/callings of other professions. It does
not mean you stop writing poetry forever - if it is your real calling - but
you earn a little bread, and/or you don't fall off a cliff looking for a job
after you get that vaunted MFA, or feel, sometimes totally inappropriately
that all you can do, after that 'training', is to go teach.
That robust imagination - if it's still there - can go many other places, as
well.
Lecture over - !
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
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