MFA/MFYOU

When will the annoying to-MFA-or-not-to-MFA prattle end?  Everyone in a MFA program is awful and MFA programs just take your money, you don’t need an MFA to be a writer, only real experience and heart can make you a writer and no amount of MFA will give you that, people with MFAs have a stranglehold on every conceivable publishing avenue, there is a secret syndicate of MFAs who were responsible for the Bay of Pigs and seek to destroy everyone who’s ever put pen to a piece of paper that wasn’t an application to an MFA program, blah blah blah.

Still, the idea behind this new online journal is kind of cute– the editors are a married couple, one enrolled in an MFA program and one working full time.  And to their credit, they don’t seem to skew in one direction of the MFA-or-no nonsense: they want top-quality writing from both ends of the spectrum.  It’s out there, so it just depends on where they solicit and how they market for submissions.  However, take a look at this statement from the website:

So what’s the difference between these two separate paths? What do you gain from an MFA program and what do you gain from doing it on your own? That’s what we hope to find out, and document, on this website.

If they’re successful in finding good writing from both populations, I don’t think that they’ll be able to.

I am, at the moment, struggling with a new poem.  It started with a pleasant idea, which I suppose is no stunning endorsement, but each time I think I have nailed down the mechanics of the poem, I make a discovery which confounds that logic.

When this happens to me, I often find that some time away helps, so I just leave the poem alone.  And since I am hosting trivia tonight, I will probably do just that.  But it pains me to walk away from this one. I have this nagging suspicion that what it really requires is more attention, not less attention.

My impulse towards making the poem, as opposed to just writing it, has been strong lately.  I find myself drawn to heavily organized information resembling received forms.  And it shows in what I have been enjoying reading recently.

Speaking of what I’m reading, I’m in the middle of a novel, too, and just about three times on every page, I ask myself, “How on earth is the writer pulling this off?” If you analyze it at the sentence level, most of his prose is ridiculous and impossibly unstable.  The novel ought to be a mess, despite its careful organization, just because those sentences are so far out.  But it’s working.  I remember feeling this way about Hitchcock’s Vertigo.  The individual elements in that movie were so out of whack that they simply should not have worked.  But they do.  They work famously.

If it’s Friday, I must be feeling snarky!  Watch the hell out, poetry world!

Clearly, the author failed to take into account that most everyone in Philadelphia is paralyzed, watching what New Yorkers are doing - “It’s not every day that a new magazine is launched in Philadelphia, and even rarer still does a literary journal make its debut in the City of Brotherly Love”

You guys were just dying to use that Photoshopped picture, huh? - Poetry Foundation’s new commenting policy on Harriet

Man is “contacted by professional genealogists, librarians, and members of the public from all over the world” and makes amazing discovery: the poet he was researching was also a grocer. A GROCER!  Praise be! - Readers of the BBC Scotland news website have helped solve the mystery of a 19th Century poet

Poetry Everywhere attempts to get Marie Howe’s Hair Everywhere.  Hey, look, Marie Howe has beautiful hair.  I’m not being snarky now.  Marie Howe really does have beautiful hair. - Poetry Everywhere is designed to take a fresh look at poetry

Of course, the best snark of the week comes from the comments on the Harriet comment policy page: “I find I’m more aggravated by self-promotional posts than combative ones (”I wrote about this in my book…,” “Let me direct you to a conversation I had with…,” “Here are some passages written after I met…” — that sort of thing).”  Hells yes, Lydia Olidea!  I believe I wrote about this in my book, Why Some Commenters on Harriet are Douches. I am agreeing with this sentiment for the very first time.

There’s nothing more backwardly snarky in the world than the community that’s sprung up around failwhale.com, and ReadWriteWeb details the history in this post.  I <3 the fail whale!  (If you don’t know what fail whale is, you clearly need to join Twitter.)

Kay Ryan is the new Poet Laureate of the United States.  I’m not one to get too awfully excited about Poets Laureate, because, well, it’s probably not really all that desirable a job in some ways and selecting artists to do jobs that are fundamentally administrative… well, the success rate on that is about the same as the success rate for selecting teachers to do jobs that are fundamentally administrative.  Our most recent Poets Laureate have been tremendous artists and, for a variety of reasons, perfectly mediocre Poets Laureate.

Well, in fairness to them, the job description kind of sucks: “The poet laureate consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress serves as the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans. During his or her term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.”  Raising the national consciousness to greater appreciation of anything is all but impossible, unless we’re appreciating terrorist fist jabs and that sort of thing.  And poetry… how is one to raise the awareness?  Fly to Hollywood and ask every studio currently producing a tearjerker movie to include a great poem in the eulogy scene?  Lobby USA Today to replace their visually-appealing-but-grossly-incorrect info-graphics with poem-graphics?

If you ask me (and no one did, by the way), Poets Laureate should be spending all of their time and energy promoting programs for teachers, programs that not only get poetry into schools but raise the quality and character of poetry instruction.  Because it sucks!  From what I have heard, Robert Pinsky did a tremendous job during his tenure as Poet Laureate and has continued to focus his energies in this direction, for which I am tremendously grateful.

Kay Ryan’s appointment to the post has potential, people, so I’m hopeful.  By her own admission, Ryan is “an outsider,” though I suppose I dare you to name a poet who doesn’t believe he or she is, in some fundamental human way, an outsider.  Dana Gioia, maybe.  Billy Collins.  Yeah, ok, so give me a list of ten.

At the very least, I find Ryan’s work to be magnificently energetic.  If you’re not familiar, you should check out these poems.

…by an Earthquake

John Ashbery

A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past.
B, in love with A, receives an unsigned letter in which the writer states that she is the mistress of A and begs B not to take him away from her.
B, compelled by circumstances to be a companion of A in an isolated place, alters her rosy views of love and marriage when she discovers, through A, the selfishness of men.
A, an intruder in a strange house, is discovered; he flees through the nearest door into a windowless closet and is trapped by a spring lock.
A is so content with what he has that any impulse toward enterprise is throttled.
A solves an important mystery when falling plaster reveals the place where some old love letters are concealed.
A-4, missing food from his larder, half believes it was taken by a “ghost.”
A, a crook, seeks unlawful gain by selling A-8 an object, X, which A-8 already owns.
A sees a stranger, A-5, stealthily remove papers, X, from the pocket of another stranger, A-8, who is asleep. A follows A-5.
A sends an infernal machine, X, to his enemy, A-3, and it falls into the hands of A’s friend, A-2.
Angela tells Philip of her husband’s enlarged prostate, and asks for money.
Philip, ignorant of her request, has the money placed in an escrow account.
A discovers that his pal, W, is a girl masquerading as a boy.
A, discovering that W is a girl masquerading as a boy, keeps the knowledge to himself and does his utmost to save the masquerader from annoying experiences.
A, giving ten years of his life to a miserly uncle, U, in exchange for a college education,loses his ambition and enterprise.

A, undergoing a strange experience among a people weirdly deluded, discovers the secret of the delusion from Herschel, one of the victims who has died. By means ofinformation obtained from the notebook, A succeeds in rescuing the other victims of the delusion.
A dies of psychic shock.
Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, “Boris Karloff.”

Silver coins from the Mojave Desert turn up in the possession of a sinister jeweler.
Three musicians wager that one will win the affections of the local kapellmeister’s wife; the losers must drown themselves in a nearby stream.
Ardis, caught in a trap and held powerless under a huge burning glass, is saved by an eclipse of the sun.
Kent has a dream so vivid that it seems a part of his waking experience.
A and A-2 meet with a tragic adventure, and A-2 is killed.
Elvira, seeking to unravel the mystery of a strange house in the hills, is caught in an electrical storm. During the storm the house vanishes and the site on which it stood becomes a lake.
Alphonse has a wound, a terrible psychic wound, an invisible psychic wound, which causes pain in flesh and tissue which, otherwise, are perfectly healthy and normal.
A has a dream which he conceives to be an actual experience.
Jenny, homeward bound, drives and drives, and is still driving, no nearer to her home than she was when she first started.
Petronius B. Furlong’s friend, Morgan Windhover, receives a wound from which he dies.
Thirteen guests, unknown to one another, gather in a spooky house to hear Toe reading Buster’s will.
Buster has left everything to Lydia, a beautiful Siamese girl poet of whom no one has heard.
Lassie and Rex tussle together politely; Lassie, wounded, is forced to limp home.
In the Mexican gold rush a city planner is found imprisoned by outlaws in a crude cage of sticks.
More people flow over the dam and more is learned about the missing electric cactus.
Too many passengers have piled onto a cable car in San Francisco; the conductor is obliged to push some of them off.
Maddalena, because of certain revelations she has received, firmly resolves that she will not carry out an enterprise that had formerly been dear to her heart.

Fog enters into the shaft of a coal mine in Wales.
A violent wind blows the fog around.
Two miners, Shawn and Hillary, are pursued by fumes.
Perhaps Emily’s datebook holds the clue to the mystery of the seven swans under the upas tree.
Jarvis seeks to manage Emily’s dress shop and place it on a paying basis. Jarvis’s bibulous friend, Emily, influences Jarvis to take to drink, scoffing at the doctor who has forbidden Jarvis to indulge in spirituous liquors.
Jarvis, because of a disturbing experience, is compelled to turn against his friend, Emily.
A ham has his double, “Donnie,” take his place in an important enterprise.
Jarvis loses a small fortune in trying to help a friend.
Lodovico’s friend, Ambrosius, goes insane from eating the berries of a strange plant, and makes a murderous attack on Lodovico.
“New narrative” is judged seditious. Hogs from all over go squealing down the street.
Ambrosius, suffering misfortune, seeks happiness in the companionship of Joe, and in playing golf.
Arthur, in a city street, has a glimpse of Cathy, a strange woman who has caused him to become involved in a puzzling mystery.
Cathy, walking in the street, sees Arthur, a stranger, weeping.
Cathy abandons Arthur after he loses his money and is injured and sent to a hospital.
Arthur, married to Beatrice, is haunted by memories of a former sweetheart, Cornelia, a heartless coquette whom Alvin loves.

Sauntering in the park on a fine day in spring, Tricia and Plotinus encounter a little girl grabbing a rabbit by its ears. As they remonstrate with her, the girl is transformed into a mature woman who regrets her feverish act.
Running up to the girl, Alvin stumbles and loses his coins.
In a nearby dell, two murderers are plotting to execute a third.
Beatrice loved Alvin before he married.
B, second wife of A, discovers that B-3, A’s first wife, was unfaithful.
B, wife of A, dons the mask and costume of B-3, A’s paramour, and meets A as B-3; his memory returns and he forgets B-3, and goes back to B.
A discovers the “Hortensius,” a lost dialogue of Cicero, and returns it to the crevice where it lay.
Ambrose marries Phyllis, a nice girl from another town.
Donnie and Charlene are among the guests invited to the window.
No one remembers old Everett, who is left to shrivel in a tower.
Pellegrino, a rough frontiersman in a rough frontier camp, undertakes to care for an orphan.
Ildebrando constructs a concealed trap, and a person near to him, Gwen, falls into the trap and cannot escape.

Here’s a short list of things I really enjoy:

• T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
• American people faking British accents
• Portishead’s “Sour Times”

So why should this be so annoying?  Maybe it’s because it’s eight-and-a-half minutes of the loop from “Sour Times.”  Eight-and-a-half minutes!

Look, I applaud almost any mashup that incorporates good poems.  But, in a cruel and bizarre twist of fate, this one increased my appreciation of the Eliot for about 45 seconds, and then I became so annoyed at the loop that I actually started thinking, “Oh my God, if I never hear ‘Sour Times’ again, that will be OK by me.”  Is there such a thing as a mashdown?  You know, a mashup attempt that not only fails to do anything really new, but also makes you wonder why you ever liked the work it’s derived from in the first place?

Took a “writing” day yesterday to work on developing my graduating class, but ended up using it to complete my preparation for thesis interviews.  I now have two manuscripts entirely marked up, one in more detail than just about anything I have ever marked up, and one at a comfortable level.  (The comfortable one is a friend, and hell, we’ve already talked about the manuscript… so I hardly know what to say in the interview, though given the fact that I actually get smarter in the proximity of the smart people at Warren Wilson, I am sure I’ll say something useful to the author.)

After finishing up, I started re-reading a novel that I really enjoyed in middle school, and am surprised at how, though I did not remember any of it when I started, I now recall quite a bit of it now that I have seen the name of the wacky occultist: Samuel Klugarsh.  A good name in a story will stay with a reader for a long, long time in the deepest pockets of the subconscious.  I was feeling guilty about the fact that I haven’t read a book of poems in two weeks, then realized that I have, they just aren’t bound yet.

I am eating half a Pizzone for breakfast.

Don’t get your panties in a wad. It just happens to be Friday and I just happen to be venemous again. I don’t plan to do this every Friday, poemmonkeys.

Quit complaining about the establishment. Some of those people are better writers than you are: The Future of Poetry Magazines.

Both sides suck; writers should have control over their work, yes, but enough sense to choose a program of study that will respect them: Creative writing students struggle to keep their work off the Web.

Everybody’s got their something, which also explains T-Pain: Mad ducats for bad poems.

Oh, awesome, another social network for shitty writers: How to outsource the slush pile.

Spend the time thinking about your acceptances, because clearly your rejections are taking up too much of your mental energy: What counts as a personal rejection?

#8 on the list of problems poets will never have - losing $10m to a gambling habit. WTF, Charles?: Barkley owes a casino $400k.

It’s good to know that the history of langpo can be delivered in a fashion nearly as annoying as langpo itself, but for the love of God, leave O’Hara out of that mess, it ain’t his fault: The Same Old Same Old New York School

Two attempts to reach Jeannine Hall Gailey through her web site have failed.  I can leave her a comment on a blog post, but the anal-retentive part of me hates it when the comment isn’t directly relevant to the entry it comments on.  Is that entirely batshit crazy?  But yeah, I can’t bring myself to use that forum for a personal message, or even a general, “Hey, please contact me, even though you don’t know me.”  Is writing this entry in my own blog, which of course carries the implicit message that if you know Jeannine you should e-mail me her e-mail address or direct her here that she may contact me directly, even more batshit crazy?

Other mild compulsions which I would like to overcome but cannot: I have to fold potato chip bags into a neat rectangle before I can throw them away.  If I’m at the top of the stairs and the cat is at the top of the stairs, I have to make him go down first.  I cannot write in books.

It’s Friday afternoon and I am feeling 100% snarky.  (Before you ask: no reason in particular.)

Somehow I just don’t think I’ll like my co-workers’ updates about conferences they attended any better when they’re in sonnet form: Arts conference speaker urges more poetry in the workplace

Thank God he was the only white male poet ever to experience body issues, lest we be bombarded with hundreds of poets by middle-aged men about their flaccid penises (oh, wait): Larkin: “I’m Ugly”

I don’t see what all the fuss is about since 99% of VQR submitters have never seen the magazine.  Hell, 99% of all submitters anywhere have never read the magazine: VQR apologizes for publishing reader comments on manuscripts

48% of poetry readers find poetry through television… which either means that I’m watching all the wrong television or the 9 people who admitted to reading poems for a University of Chicago survey don’t have 500 channels to choose from:  Survey takes a closer look at fans of verse

The part that doesn’t shock me is that Shel Silverstein’s verse is indistinguishable from that of a 10-year-old: KidsPost contest winners are plaigarists

After months of not hearing a single response to a single submission (I couldn’t even get responses to several queries for submissions that have been out for over a year– should I go ahead and assume they’re not taking the work?), I’ve had two responses in the last couple of weeks.  Both acceptances.

Rawk. I’m gonna send more stuff out.