Training writers
I am fortunate enough to possess one of the most ridiculed degrees in all academia: the MFA in writing. I obtained this degree from a prestigious school, so that somewhat lessens the level of condescension I have to tolerate at those snooty parties where my MA/MS/JD/M.Phil/etc friends swill various French concoctions and trade classroom war stories. But still, there is the lingering feeling of intellectual inferiority, of reduced accomplishment. This is a great and ironic shame, I think, because my knowledge in my chosen discipline (poetry) is extensive and (I'm told) intimidating.
MFA programs tend to be either (a) too open in their teaching methods and approaches, thus promoting confusion, or (b) too rigid in their methods, thus stifling creativity. The problem, I think, is that a two-year program simply isn't long enough to truly learn your art. Developing mastery in poetry, in this era, is about a great deal more than just unleashing some spontaneous overflow of emotion; it's about craft, language, history, philosophy. Poetry is like the guitar – you can't do much with the guitar if you don't understand what it can do. In order to understand what it's capable of, you have to have some sense of what's been done with it in the past.
In my ideal world, there would be Ph.D. programs in the composition of poetry. I don't mean the Ph.D. in creative writing as it exists – I mean a doctorate program on par with those in other disciplines. If you get a Ph.D. in mathematics, for example, you don't start by getting your master's degree first – the master's is incorporated into the doctoral course of study. So what I propose is a five-year program leading to the Ph.D., with an MA/MFA folded into it. Here's how I would set it up:
YEAR 1
Semester 1:
- Introduction to craft (grammar, basic prosody, survey/history of English poetry)
- Workshop
- Foreign language (Yes, you should learn a foreign language for creative writing)
Semester 2:
- Prosody (Beowulf to Shakespeare)
- Workshop
- Foreign language
YEAR 2:
Semester 1:
- Prosody (Shakespeare to Yeats)
- Workshop
- Foreign language
Semester 2:
- Contemporary Prosody
- Workshop
- Foreign language
- Ph.D. qualifying exam prep
Year End:
- Qualifying exam
- Four-week study abroad (a vacation with one class: philosophies of poetry)
YEAR 3:
Semester 1:
- Workshop
- Craft: contemporary prosody / art of translation
- Elective
Semester 2:
- Workshop
- Module-based selective craft (3 modules per semester – prosody, specific craft element, etc)
- Elective
YEAR 4:
Semester 1:
- Workshop (weekly, one-one-one or small peer-chosen groups)
- Craft: 3 modules on specific writers
- Bi-weekly quodlibet (Student-teacher meetings where you talk about anything literary)
Semester 2:
- Workshop (weekly, one-on-one/small groups)
- Craft (research-based/interactive; students teach their own craft techniques to peers)
- Bi-weekly quodlibet
Year-end:
4-week intensive writing retreat
YEAR 5:
Semester 1:
- Workshop (one-on-one)
- Manuscript strategies
- Bi-weekly/monthly quodlibet, optional
Semester 2:
- Workshop
- Manuscript strategies
- Bi-weekly/monthly quodlibet, optional
- Exam/defense prep
- Graduate readings (for the whole semester!)
Year End:
- Manuscript defense
- Doctoral examination (language, history, philosophy, craft)
- Hooding
- Commencement
So that's my maniacal creative writing program. It gives the student four years of craft, ranging from traditional prosody to writer-specific concentrations. It gives the student an opportunity to demonstrate their own skill in craft, and discuss their own strategies and choices. The student leaves with two years of a foreign language, a year of experience assembling a book, five years of writing in a protected environment, and even some grammar and philosophy to boot. It is, in short, the equivalent of a very intensive bachelor's degree, except that it focuses specifically on poetry.
It might be argued that someone coming into a a post-baccalaureate degree in poetry should already have at least some portion of this knowledge. Perhaps this is true, but that argument relies upon the notion that poetry is like other disciplines – after all, a student doesn't gain admittance into a Ph.D. program in physics until they've established a working knowledge equivalent to a bachelor's degree. But writing isn't quite like this – it's an art, and we have seen lots of writers who didn't receive top-notch educations but exhibited a wealth of talent. One of the things a writing program should do is take a writer's abundance of raw talent and hone it, provide it with resources, give it context. It is because of this belief that we have a republic of voices, writers of color who didn't spring out of the Ivy League freshly-groomed and speaking King's English. If we are to embrace and promote that belief, then we have to be prepared to provide our writers with an education equivalent to — really, better than — the literary educations of our finest undergraduate schools.