Tuesday, February 23, 2010

On the existence of the MFA poem

This makes for an interesting piece to read. Anyone feel the same or not so much? Just something for the CW MFA community to ponder.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting, this interview was also in the news today on poetry and the MFA: Edward Hirsch makes a pretty insightful point on whether the MFA program is hurting poetry and if culture can absorb so many people trying to make a living off the art is ...http://bigthink.com/ideas/18770

Anonymous said...

Anyone else get a terribly misleading e-mail from CCA today re: being "able to afford your studies at California College of the Arts?"

I won't copy the whole thing here, but needless to say, the wording was entirely confusing. I called them in order to do a little fact-finding (though I realized as soon as the office picked up that I had no idea what I could ask that they'd possibly be willing to tell me). Anyway, I asked them (more or less) what the deal was, and the woman on the other end replied, "It's a generic email to all incoming stu-" and then she stopped, clearly thinking that perhaps "incoming students" wasn't the phrase she was looking for, and changed it to "applicants."

Fishy, CCA. Either way - these schools need to STOP sending emails that contain neither decisions nor information about the timing of decisions. That, or, in the subject line, just warn us by writing "THIS IS NOT AN ADMISSION DECISION." Between CCA and Columbia I've had like 11 email-induced heart attacks this month.

Tyler said...

All of this is the result of our culture's lionization of the writer. Now that we no longer look up to writers like we used to, in 50 years, the level of creative writers will be back down to sustainable levels.

Or we'll become a race of poets, and what's the harm in that?

frankish said...

@Tyler - If we no longer lionize writers, why am I bothering? :D

Cheers!

Unknown said...

li/on

Anonymous said...

Maybe this one has already been posted on here, but here's another article for prospective authors and MFA-ers to consider:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-endurability7-2010feb07,0,4119789.story

Anonymous said...

Or possibly more to the original point of the blog entry, there's this article published in the New Yorker last year:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/06/08/090608crat_atlarge_menand

tingting said...
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