Luke,
I accept your apology from earlier.
I’ve done more reading of the articles on the Argotist and the general consensus seems that the problem isn’t to do that much with teaching poetry itself but with possible “favouritism” creeping in between student and teacher and the teacher promoting the student’s poems and getting them published in magazines respected by academia. But poets who are not students don’t have this advantage and so their poems won’t see the light of day etc. This means that only students supported by teachers/academics etc will get their work respected. Leading to an inaccurate picture to the outside world of the state of play about what avantgarde poetry is. In other words, a very limited view of what avantgarde poetry is.
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I'm sitting a CW course, and my impression is that it's a myth that writing can't be taught, but that it's especially difficult, due to the different starting points and goals of students, compared to something like chem or physics. It's also reassuring that it seems many important 20th century poets have had writing students.
Luke
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