The Instauration Part 4

The Back Nine

-- Parliament of Fowls by Geoffrey Chaucer
-- Astrophil and Stella by Philip Sydney
-- The Temple by George Herbert
-- The Borough by George Crabbe
-- the fascicles of Emily Dickinson
-- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
-- Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience//Milton/Jerusalem by William Blake
-- The Bothie of Tober Na-Vuolich by Arthur Hugh Clough
-- Chamber Music by James Joyce

The High Life

The explanation for the above list is forthcoming, dear readers, as is yet a third list.

A debate among modern-day poets concerns whether academic Master of Fine Arts programs training creative writing teachers really help anybody write better poetry.

The MFA initiative got its impetus (at least as far as I know) in the 1980s, though I'm not sure why. I actually considered going for one myself at the time, but I ultimately decided to continue on the serpentine route my life was on then, and has taken since. I ain't braggin' -- it's just what happened.

There are hundreds of creative writing programs in US colleges nowadays, with many published poets having MFA degrees teaching the classes. (I have no idea whether you can major in it or not -- to be honest, I would hate to think you could major in such a thing as creative writing.)

Yes, dear readers, I admit I had the MFA circuit in mind when I posted about The Club in The Rogue Sonneteer, at least to this extent: It just seemed all too easy to scribble, grade others' scribbles and everyone proclaim each other poets. I'm OK with scribbling -- I was a journalist for more than 25 years. I got paid (merely) to do it. But it's too low a poetic standard for me. My creative work has come from the 'storm and stress' of living a very uncertain life, and I'd hope my poetic craft reflects that uncertain but poetically potent course. (I'm sure I'm not alone.)

Here's the bottom line: You determine who you are by what and who you serve. If you live life only to serve yourself, that's really all you're going to be worth in the end. If you live to serve others, that's well and good. Too often we -- all-too-humanly, I think -- expect some reward for it. However, if you can serve expecting no reward or even commendation for your service -- that's a high standard. It's aiming at the chivalrous life, to be sure.

It doesn't matter whether you have a BA (whatever the major), an MFA, a PhD, or you're a high school dropout: if you use poetry to serve this place and time, as well as for whatever and whoever comes after you're dead, then you are a true poet -- to me anyway.

It's a thankless job, and that's why it's so damn good.


My CQ

'CQ' is journalism argot for "correct quote." It's used by a reporter to tell an editor that, yes, that's what the person being quoted actually said -- usually to cite some cracked grammar or a malapropism that is necessary not to fix because it figures somehow into the story you're writing.

But, before my journalism career began, it meant something else to me. My parents urged me to "get involved" in something during my Chapel Hill days, and, even in the mid-1970s, it was good career advice for an undergraduate. I took it, but probably not in the direction they intended.

I volunteered as a front-end reader for the Carolina Quarterly, a highly respected literary magazine then and now. I forget what they actually called my position, but I basically was assigned to read and review unsolicited submissions for the magazine. It was a non-paying, low-end job, but I was more than happy to take it.

You wrote your comments in longhand on the back of the manila envelope the story or article (CQ did not accept poetry submissions in those days) came in -- placed in your cubbyhole at the main office by the editor, who then reviewed your reviews. If you showed ability, you got better submissions to read. You did your job well but maybe lacked the discerning eye, you stayed with the not-so-hot stuff. You goofed off or screwed up, you were replaced. That's what I took from my initial interview, anyway. I was accepted on a trial basis.

Things at first seemed to be going well: I was praised for my work ethic but also given several pointers along the way. One fine autumn day, a submission came in my box from a professor of literature at nearby UNC-Greensboro. This piece did the-then unpopular thing of putting science together with literature (as well as fiction with non-fiction). The scientific discipline involved was botany. I'd already had one botany course and was preparing to take another, more advanced, course in the spring. I gave the piece a glowing review: this guy could write really well, and he could tackle difficult topics at the same time.

Some CQ staffers were enthusiastic, others less so. This story broke new ground, and it may have made some looking for academic careers uneasy (I'm guessing here). I felt it was my job (unconscious gall being my specialty) to champion the piece, and I kept asking about it. My "asking about it" included the Christmas party, where we were all informed another publication had accepted the piece already. I wasn't sure everyone's expressed disappointment was completely genuine, but maybe that was just mine clouding my own interpersonal judgment.

At any rate, my stock began to fall at the CQ. There were surely many perfectly legitimate reasons for the phone call to my dorm room in January that informed me of my departure from the staff, but the article I may have too-strenuously championed was an unmentioned one that I concluded then was the misstep that started my descent. It's what I used to salve my banged-up ego, anyway.

I was informed that my name would not be listed in the spring issue of CQ, and that meant it would not be listed on any of my future resumes, either. If I had considered going to graduate school before, I did not after. And though I had never been fired from anything before that, it was the first of many such experiences I underwent on the career path I did finally choose.

Shortly after I hung up the phone that January in 1977, I made up my mind I was a born maverick, and a maverick I would stay. Oddly, I feel I've benefited from that decision, though it may seem to have cost me dearly in most people's eyes.

"Linnaeus Forgets" by Fred Chappell was published that spring in the American Review -- a journal with a much higher profile than the Carolina Quarterly. Dr. Chappell went on to a brilliant career as an essayist, critic, novelist and poet -- and as perhaps a maverick who knew how to play that game much better than I ever did.

In any case, my views on academe and what I call The Club need to be seen, at least partly, in that light. Do I have a jaundiced eye? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I do know: I recognized, even as an undergraduate, really good writing when I saw it. Of that, I was sure.

I still am.


The Wrest of the Story {cq}

I was dealt with firmly, but fairly, at the Carolina Quarterly. The editors at the time simply felt that the "pointers along the way" they gave me were not being taken, or even sinking beneath my rather thick skull. Everyone was more than polite about it, and I remained on "speaking and smiling-in-passing" terms with both editors throughout the remainder of my campus days. Though it hurt like s$%* to get canned, I did not blame them. They were just doing their jobs.

As always, there's more to the story: I related the positive portion yesterday in my post, but not the negative. I also reviewed a "test entry" mailed to CQ by a world-famous author. This person was likely sending a manuscript to us she'd typed herself, just to get feedback outside the New York publishing "loop" as it existed then. I did not have the maturity (or experience) to see that, and I slammed the piece -- which, by the way, was not professionally typed or edited. (Note: This was many years years before personal computers appeared on the large-scale consumer market. Tying manuscripts to fit submission guidelines in the 1970s was a real and very time-consuming chore for anyone but professional typists. Trust me.)

I felt piqued that I had to read this lengthy story at a time when schoolwork was really starting to pile up, and I vented -- probably too harshly. I was an undergrad.

No one said anything to me about it then, and other CQ staffers' comments on the manila, while perhaps less direct, were much the same. Still, my poison pen can't have helped my case very much.

I had at the time considered graduate school and an academic career, but not seriously, and I perhaps unwisely let my editors know that. There was only other undergrad on the staff, whom I did not meet until the Christmas party. He was truly on an academic track, and he regarded me disdainfully at that particular fest. It did not occur to me then (or until many years later) that maybe I had been getting to read famous peoples' stuff, and not him.

Why am I going on like this? For one thing, my dismissal from CQ was a little chip that had been sitting on my shoulder for half a lifetime, and I'm glad I just now knocked it off.

But, more importantly, I have a larger point: How many of the names on The Top Ten (or the still-evolving Back Nine) were literary scholars in their day?

Scholarship has its place, there's no doubt about it. And the academy is the keeper of that particular flame, again, without a doubt. Since the time of Auden, it's also been a haven for many poets.

But the best literature, and especially poetry, seems to emerge without an MFA or a PhD necessarily attached. That flame burns on its own, within or without the ivy walls. Even in college, I believed that.

I still do.

---

This is all I plan to say about this topic, at least for the time being. However, I need to mention one more thing to loop back on the theme that got me started: as a college student, I was not living to serve anyone but me back then, and I got what I deserved. I came to know a better way later, and, while I'd rather avoid belaboring an all-too-familiar quote, I must say it has made all the difference.


Have Gun, Will Travel*

"If, in your working hours, you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public, nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain."

from "The Inner Ring," collected in The Weight of Glory: and other addresses by C.S. Lewis, HarperCollins, New York: 2001, pp. 156-7.

_____

*I don't have a gun. It's just an allusion. From an old TV show about a man called ... .


A Bloody Sacrifice

"Give! Give! Just give yourself away!" So shouted the clergyman from his perch one Sunday many years ago -- urging the congregation to be more charitable, I suppose.

As I sat there listening to him expand on this theme, I wondered to myself: Once they've all given themselves away, who would be left to do the giving?

It's a question that harks back to a post I made not very long after I started this blog in 2008. The post is called "Ouch!" and I think it relates to this issue. Once they've put a laurel on you, you're pretty much done with being yourself whenever or wherever you feel like it. You're expected to do this, be that or whatever comes with the laurel you're given.

And that laurel may be invisible to the laureate. While the official ones are usually visible, laurels can also be imaginary. And, the imaginary ones can work more like labels than awards. (Maybe the official ones do, too. I wouldn't know about that, personally.)

A recent television advertising campaign urges recipients of a certain program to "guard their cards," that is, protect the identity guarantees that allow them to benefit from this program. I believe, and strongly, that poets need to guard their talents, time and treasure (in whatever form). A misguided laurel can just as bad as a misapplied label.

This hazard just comes with the job.

I told you it was thankless, didn't I?