Black Mountain was hardly a formally organized 
institution, particularly in its last few years, 
when Olson was called in to oversee its demise. 
There were at that point about a hundred 
students. But it's the Black Mountain College we 
remember as poets. Even in its rum days it 
neither sought nor received accreditation.

I'm acutely aware of the impact of the 
academicization of poetry in the US. It's been an 
unmitigated disaster. But that wasn't caused by 
the existence of academic journals. Let's se what they turn out.

The inclusion of titles in the board list is a 
bit comic opera, but let's blame it on a 
beginner's mis-step. We should wish the 
enterprise well, and maybe in that spirit let the 
editor know that he should drop the honorifics.

Mark

At 10:58 AM 10/22/2009, you wrote:
>One of the big dangers is definitely the codification of practice, and
>I am with Jeff on this. This has happened to some extent with 'avant
>garde' poetry in the States and it has certainly happened to art here
>in the art colleges - they do not set good examples. Once the products
>of creativity get into that loop it is very difficult for them to
>disentangle. We all want good teachers and good teaching but all too
>often good teachers and good teaching get lost in the systems and
>bureaucracies with their other demands and agendas. The need to get a
>'qualification' or certain letters after your name has in the past not
>been the same as the need to create originally. You need freedom and
>focus. At times this has been given by creative people living and
>working together - the typical artistic group or milieu or movement.
>And sometimes of course in glorious isolation from any such thing.
>Cases of such things coming from formally organised higher ed
>institutions are rare - Black Mountain would be one of those rarities.
>I'm not being romantic about this, I think I am being realistic.
>
>Individuals, such as Robert Sheppard or whoever, are able to fight
>against codification, but systems and organisations cannot. Or at
>least, they cannot within the context of modern capitalist society.
>
>Tim A.
>
>On 22 Oct 2009, at 15:01, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>
>>Sean, I'm not against academic journals if they are about the study of
>>poetry rather than concentrating on how it should be written etc.
>>And I
>>get the feeling that this journal may lead to this, having read some
>>of
>>Robert‚s theories on practice. Only time will tell, however.
>
>Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of 
>Cuban Poetry (University of California Press).
>Forthcoming in November 2009.
>http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>
>