Recently I spent three days at a private high school in New England, doing something that, given my considerable unease over the rise of the creative-writing establishment, I had thought I would never do: I taught a poetry workshop.
Not, mind you, that a poetry workshop is necessarily a terrible thing. Some of my best friends teach poetry workshops. And I would never contest the proposition that the guidance of a certain type of poet can be of real value to a certain type of student. Surely one can imagine a gifted, intelligent fledgling poet profiting from the experience of working closely with a more mature poet who loves his art, has a technical mastery of it, knows its history, and, while maintaining high standards of discipline, discrimination, and technique, is open-minded enough to allow the student to develop in his own direction—and who, moreover, has the time, energy, sensitivity, and dedication to help him find that direction.
At least nine times out of ten, they manufacture tame, slack, and highly derivative free-verse lyrics
But unblinkered veterans of creative-writing programs know that this ideal is seldom approached, let alone attained. More often, students are encouraged to view poetry not as an art but as a profession; encouraged not to aspire to excellence but to tailor their work to a marketplace that exalts blandness and mediocrity; encouraged not to work hard at poems over a substantial period of time, but to churn them out like assembly-line products.
