Winter break was not, I'm happy to report, a dead loss, despite the sad fact that I was shanghaied onto a hiring committee and had to wade through several hundred job applicants, then hole up in a hotel room at the M.L.A. between Christmas and New Year's Eve. (If you are in the job-applying position this year, you have my sympathy — there's a lot of talent out there, and not many places for it to go). Besides my service to Our Fine and Collegial College, I finally found the time to sit down, root around in my notebooks, and write an essay I've been thinking about for months. I'm giving it a minimalist, colon-and-subtitle free name, "The Discursive Situation of Poetry." I suppose it's my contribution to the discussion about the relative decline of poetry's audience over the last century and a half (Dana Gioia's "Can Poetry Matter?" and all that). Here's the opening paragraph:
Statistics confirm what many have long suspected: poetry is being read by an ever-smaller slice of the American reading public. Poets and critics who have intuited this have blamed many things, but for the most part they have blamed the rise of M.F.A. programs in creative writing. While they have made various recommendations on how to remedy the situation, these remedies are destined for failure or, at best, for very limited success, because the rise of M.F.A. programs is merely a symptom of much larger and farther-reaching trends. These trends are unlikely to be reversed by the intervention of a few poets, critics, and arts-administrators. I’m not sure this is a bad thing. Or, in any event, I’m not sure it is worse than what a reversal of the decline in readership would entail. Let me explain.
There's still time to do some revisions before it appears in a book Mary Biddinger is editing as part of a new series on poetics she's started at the U. of Akron Press, so consider this an early warning of pedantry to come. If you want to give me some notes on the draft (warning: it runs about 8,000 words), send an email my way at my Lake Forest College address.
My two cents here comes from a recent musing (actually a year's musing) that really came to fruition while I was Facebook stalking all the Facebook poetry I could, some from students and some from amateur writers doing it just for kicks.
ReplyDeleteI think,and I could be wrong, there is an overall acceptance of mediocrity that originates from--and is not the fault of--the way creative writing is taught in classes. We learn what "modern" writing is, we adapt to it, and we relish in our contemporaries that sadly ascribe to us youngsters certain labels, like "brilliant." From what I can see, poets make friends and connections this way (and I don't resent anyone who makes it, in the least). In my lonely opinion, poetry isn't about making friends or pleasing people or getting into markets, circles, cliques or any of that good stuff: it is the result of a compulsion to write what the author considers to be poetic. Yet we, the undergraduate chum of the sea, are bombarded by the consistent approval of our fellow writers and I say it's a damn shame. I think some writers are more in love with the idea of writing poetry than actually possessing that inexplicable compulsion to write. I could be wrong.
I'm going to make a possibly ridiculous statement here, some may disagree, but if poetry is going to redeem its former cultural importance and be taken seriously by the public, or at least more widely read, poets need to hear the word NO. Not, "No, your work was nice but we're not using going to publish it right now but please do try again in six months" but rather criticism along the lines of, "No, your attempt at meaningful enjambment is amateurish at best and your collegiate adjectives make my stomach clench; clearly you're an English major, what else can you show me?"
Right or wrong, for better or worse, poets are viewed as namby-pamby... wussies... it's simply not good for business. I think if there's going to be a spark of public interest in the field of poetry, poets need to show more venom than appreciation toward one another, universally, at all times. I feel much estranged in this opinion so I admit freely I could be wrong.
-Max
Robert,
ReplyDeleteI can't find your College address. Could you send me a draft of your paper to my email address: cdidiodato@gmail.com
Thank you!
Max,
ReplyDeleteI don't think you're too off the mark at all. I'm a Canadian and I can only talk about the Canadian experience, and it's pretty dismal here.
Yes, creative writing classes are primarily to blame but also the academics who dictate to the literary establishment what's good, what isn't. How? It goes like this:
(a) X is an academic who's written a book of poetry (quality and merit don't seem to be an issue);
(b) X applies to Canada Council;
(c) Canada Council bureaucrats in Ottawa, knowing that to get Professor X's book of poetry in print will be profitable to government and justify their jobs, will most likely approve;
(d) Professor X, holding his approved Canada Council grant, goes to one of the many mainstream publishing houses who work in cahoots with academics and Canada Council bureaucrats;
(e) Professor X, who teaches creative writing,places his book on his course syllabus and orders multiple sets of his published book of verses,ensuring a return to publisher, government and academic institute promoting its departments to hordes of incoming high school graduates;
(f) students, who see their professors published and awarded (oh! I forgot to mention the flourishing 'awards' industry in Canada, an award for just about every artistic work imaginable)mistakenly think they
re the arbiters and true judges of 'good writing'; and
(g) students, by imitating the prescribed styles of their professors, perptetuate the cycle of bad writing in Canada.
When poetry is defined as 'self-expression,' which is how I believe that it might be taught at the high school level, then students of poetry walk away with a stunted awareness of the possibilities of language. In fact, most would probably opt to get their self-expression ya-yas out in any other way that might be construed as more "fun." Making a movie for YouTube or starting a rock band for example. Poetry is a distinct art form with distinct tricks of the trade. If no awareness of craft is imbued in students then there won't be any appreciation of the multi-levels of meaning and the depth of observation apparent in poetry that was written by the most skilled practitioners of the art.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem as to why poetry is no longer popular is the attraction of music with sung poetic content rivaling written and spoken poetry. We have had this development at least since the mid-sixties, and it is still with us. What we now call poetry is largely a specialised and hermetic form of language that is discussed within the academy, and as such is valuable within that context, but has little relevance (either emotionally or intellectually) in the broader culture. Sorry to be so negative.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem as to why poetry is no longer popular is the attraction of music with sung poetic content rivaling written and spoken poetry. We have had this development at least since the mid-sixties, and it is still with us. What we now call poetry is largely a specialised and hermetic form of language that is discussed within the academy, and as such is valuable within that context, but has little relevance (either emotionally or intellectually) in the broader culture. Sorry to be so negative.
ReplyDelete"Basically," he told me, "I hate to say it, but no one reads poetry. Nobody reads history. I write history and poetry. Therefore, what?" -- Ed Sanders
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't trust those stats. I held a meeting with the major poetry publishers in London in November and despite the context of Nielsen reporting retail market decline of roughly 10%, all the publishers confided sales had grown. There just aren't figures for non-trade sales. And non-ISBN sales. I suspect that readerships have in fact dramatically increased, but moved online. That's an assertion based on the readerships of Salt's site and I don't think we're anything special. I suspect the market is shifting around the Web in new ways. More and more people are reading classics for free. More people are giving away their content. More people are publishing poetry. But there's plenty of evidence that traditional trade consumption is in decline. That's the same for lots of genres though including literary fiction, but there's plenty of anecdotal feedback from publishers that the rise of non-traditional routes to market is on the increase. Bookshops isn't where it's really happening, as so much of the industry has shifted to a bestseller model for retail sales. I'd forecast that more chains will collapse in the next three years.
ReplyDeleteI'd go further and assert that since the emergence of the Web and cheap ADSL connection that poetry consumption on the Web has probably increased by a factor of 10 in the past eight years. Over that same period Salt's sales increased 1,025%. Last year alone, US sales increased by 25% — much of that is driven by the Web. It's possible that Google might offer some insight into page hits to Web sites that display poetry, that would be a useful piece of information to obtain.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your take on the stats I quote -- this is exactly the sort of feedback I was hoping for. In the event that you've got the time, or the inclination (and I understand that you may well have neither), I'm sending the whole damn essay. Any further notes welcome! I mean, I want this thing to be as accurate as I can make it, and I'm by no means wedded to any preordained conclusion.
Best,
Bob
And Don -- Ed Sanders is a personal hero of mine! Someday I want to write something about his multi-volume history of America in verse...
ReplyDeleteChris, here are some of those Google stats you ask about:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/trends?q=poetry
&
http://bit.ly/5Ktk7z
Not great, as I interpret them - unless you're in Pakistan - and the numbers appear to be declining.
This isn't, I hasten to say, at all scientific. So take with a grain of... salt!
The numbers are down, but you know what they say: buy low!
ReplyDeleteOff to invest in sestina futures...
Bob
So maybe what's happening in terms of Salt's figures is that, though overall search trends may be down, Salt is occupying a bigger corner of that than they even thought?
ReplyDeleteBob, I'd love to see your essay, though don't pretend to know as much about figures etc as these guys.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteI haven't read your article, obviously, though I'd love to. What I'll respond to here is not your broader argument (which I can't know) but the fact that you don't, in paragraph one of this article, denounce the MFA-as-scapegoat theory into oblivion.
In the law, few would dream of painting law school pedagogy as the cause of any ills in the American legal system -- despite the fact that legal pedagogy is exponentially more rigid, hierarchical, doctrinal, and self-consciously psychologically aggressive than any art-school pedagogy in the United States (for many reasons, not least of which is that art schools have largely laughable grading systems that have merely been impressed upon them by graduate colleges -- MFA students know that there is absolutely nothing at stake in rejecting anything they may hear or be told during the course of an MFA program; we could add to that many other elements, not least of which is the "collegial" atmosphere of the MFA, rather than the Socratic schoolmarm-model of law school). So why is law school not attributed, by lawyers, as the cause for the legal profession's many, many (many) shortcomings? Because you go to law school for three years -- you're an attorney for roughly four or five decades after that. And law school does little to prepare one for actual practice (viz. eschewing black-letter law for philosophically interesting but pragmatically inapplicable common-law generalities). Attorneys become who they are because of when and where and how and why they practice. Not a single degree program!
The notion -- particularly from someone with such a good head on his shoulders -- that poets spending twenty months in an MFA program are consequently so ruined for the next sixty years of their writing practice that they are rendered unreadable (nay, not merely unreadable, but so abysmally tepid and uniform in their aesthetic that they have destroyed the American poetry market) would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. I say dangerous because this sort of silliness keeps us from having real conversations about causes and effects.
I repeat: when you take the most recalcitrant, stubborn, independent-minded cohort of artists in the United States--poets--and you tell them, between the ages of 21 and 65 (because you can, and people do, enter MFA programs at all ages) that for twenty months they will have funded time to write and no actual restraints on what or how they write, and no consequences whatsoever for howsoever they choose to write, the idea that this twenty-month window will somehow outweigh or overshadow the remaining decades of a poet's existence -- in which s/he travels abroad, takes any number of jobs, gets married, has kids, attempts suicide, becomes a drug addict, makes friends, loses friends, and all the other felicities and infelicities of life -- is so outrageous I can't believe you or anyone else would credit it.
It's not merely that you have no proof, it's that the weight of the evidence is against you, as even were we to temporarily entertain the notion that MFAs are to blame for a failing poetry market (if we even entertain the idea that the poetry market is failing, I should add--a separate conversation) we'd have to contend with the fact that, by volume, 50% or more of the most august experimental writers now alive either are now or did previously teach creative writing in precisely the sort of programs now decried -- causing one to wonder how academia, long the postwar bastion of the avant-garde in poetry (this isn't the 1930s or early 1940s, for heavens sake!) could somehow be the vehicle by which an entire generation of poet-rebels could be turned into zombified versions of John Crowe Ransom... honestly!
Seth
P.S. Lest I be misunderstood -- I think even calling the rise of the MFA a "symptom" of a "trend" suggests a [significant] relationship between the degree program and poets' aesthetics at the time of book publication that I find insupportable, however couched. Besides a few hours once a week of workshop (or some non-MFA courses irrelevant to this question), most MFAers spend their time reading and writing and talking to other artists -- something they will, again, do for the rest of their lives, nearly every day, and with no more or less direction than they had in their MFA "programs" (as the advice of MFA teachers-cum-peers becomes, after twenty months, the advice of friends-cum-peers in the field as to who to read &c &c). --S.
ReplyDeleteSeth:
ReplyDeleteLest I be misunderstood: I DO NOT BLAME THE MFA PROGRAMS. I repeat I DO NOT BLAME THEM.
The "symptom" business, as you will see if you read the article, is this: the MFA is a part of the development of professionalization, of the universities, of the rise of the middle class, and a few other things. I actually think this is not bad a bad thing overall. I do not assume that several products of a big trend are all good or all bad.
I feel a little bit like you're aiming your criticism at something other than my article, which I'd be happy to send to you if you want to read it.
Best,
Bob
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteI'd love to read it, and I apologize if I misread where the article was headed -- as clearly I did. Obviously I was wrong, and am happy (needless to say) to be wrong. If you're still willing, you can send the article to me at sethabramson[@]yahoo.com (okay to post this, it's readily accessible already anyway). Be well,
Seth
P.S. I'm especially interested to see your take on (and definition of) "professionalization," as I think this term has at times been co-opted (and, subsequently, mischaracterized and misdefined) by those with an anti-MFA agenda. I've been thinking of writing an article on what "professionalization" might theoretically mean to a poet -- or, even in practice -- for a long time now. For instance, one effect of professionalization is a temporal shift in the thinking of an artist -- a move away from the "genius" model that says you know what kind of poet one will be by the age of twenty-five, to the "professional" model in which one presumes personal, emotional, psychological, political, social, intellectual, philosophical (acknowledging how much these terms intersect/overlap) growth over time. Which needless to say is much more in keeping with modern science and much else (increased life expectancy, &c).
Seth,
ReplyDelete"The notion -- particularly from someone with such a good head on his shoulders -- that poets spending twenty months in an MFA program are consequently so ruined for the next sixty years of their writing practice that they are rendered unreadable (nay, not merely unreadable, but so abysmally tepid and uniform in their aesthetic that they have destroyed the American poetry market) would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. "
If you are referring to me as the person with a good head on his shoulders, I am both pleased at the compliment, and appalled at having this weird and untenable argument attributed to me. I have made no such argument.
I am a bit surprised that someone I've always thought of as having a good head on his shoulders (that's you) would leap to the conclusion that I've made that argument.
Anyway: let's go on admiring one another's level heads.
B.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteI'd love to read it, and I apologize if I misread where the article was headed -- as clearly I did. Obviously I was wrong, and am happy (needless to say) to be wrong. If you're still willing, you can send the article to me at sethabramson[@]yahoo.com (okay to post this, it's readily accessible already anyway). Be well,
Seth
P.S. I'm especially interested to see your take on (and definition of) "professionalization," as I think this term has at times been co-opted (and, subsequently, mischaracterized and misdefined) by those with an anti-MFA agenda. I've been thinking of writing an article on what "professionalization" might theoretically mean to a poet -- or, even in practice -- for a long time now. For instance, one effect of professionalization is a temporal shift in the thinking of an artist -- a move away from the "genius" model that says you know what kind of poet one will be by the age of twenty-five, to the "professional" model in which one presumes personal, emotional, psychological, political, social, intellectual, philosophical (acknowledging how much these terms intersect/overlap) growth over time.
There's a lot of good sociological work on professionalization in general, less on professionalization of writing, not much of any depth on professionalization of poetry.
ReplyDeleteBruce Robbins' anthology "Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics and Intellectuals" is a pretty good place to start.
I tend to think of professionalization as something in to the marketplace. Think about law (since you know more about it than I do) or medicine: both are in some measure self-regulating fields -- they set their norms for who can and can't practice, etc. You can't just hang up a sign and say you're a doctor or lawyer, and if the market sends people your way, have a practice. That's solid professionalism. Poetry is a long way from that, though little steps have been taken in that direction. The anti-MFA types tend to argue for the marketplace as the arbiter of poetry (if it sells a lot, its important -- that sort of thing).
Me, I think there are a whole pile of forces at work in the decline of poetry's audience size from its historical peak, which (although few of the MFA-bashers get this right) was in the mid 19th century.
Anyway. There's a lot of stuff to consider (that's why the article is so damn long), and since emotions run high, I won't hazard anything to reductive.
The article isn't really about MFAs. It says that those who fixate one the MFA programs are missing the bigger picture.
For the record, I don't think a decline in readership is good or bad, really.
Bob
I always liked something John Berryman said back in the 1960s, in an interview with a student paper, I believe. He thought would-be writers shouldn't take creative writing classes, because if a writer had it in him or her, he or she would write, no matter what; & so they should take other subjects, & learn things about the world & other skills, which would all help their writing. (I'm sure Berryman put it more pithily than this paraphrase.)
ReplyDelete