alternate route

Poets and artists must resist this: The MFA way or the highway.

A degree works for some but not for others. A watershed has many tributaries.

playing long odds

He was prone to playing the long odds, so he quit his job, borrowed $50K and bet on getting an MFA in Creative Writing.

my stalker

I once perhaps lingered too long on Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA in Creative Writing website. Since then whoever, or what bot, manages their web advertising has had an ad follow me around the web. It seems wherever I surf there is this ad featuring a comely and sincere looking creative writing teacher holding her hand up, with a slightly bent forefinger, as though she were instructing me. After a month or so, being followed around the web by her, my intended instructor, I think of her as a stalker.

small window

He talked in those commonplaces of the workshop method, thus you could tell that everything he knew about poetry was learned in the couple of years he’d spent in a MFA program.

nature abhors a vacuum

Fortunately, the advent of the world wide web was able to absorb the increased output spurred by the creative writing MFA explosion.

low bar

The only writer I ever knew who actually washed out of his MFA.

fireworks

Perhaps the model of a good MFA program would be a kind of revolving hub, centered around a workshop set spinning with its aesthetic energy, generating critical friction, throwing off sparks—those MFA graduates who start their own creative fires across the cultural landscape.

higher school

Poets ranked according to the prestige of the institutions where they taught.

trading deadline

The MFA program traded its masthead Pulitzer Prize winner, a prima-donna by all accounts, for two poets with Pushcarts and a Lannan fellow to be named later.

all titled poets

All poets have MFAs…now what?

each one save one

I’m comforted by the thought that if I’m ever put under government surveillance the agent who follows me, who monitors my phone calls, who reads my emails and tracks my web-surfing, who searches through the papers in my recycle bin, will learn a lot about poetry. In fact, after two-years on my case, the agent could be awarded an honorary MFA in Poetry.

prime directive

If MFA programs in creative writing did nothing else creating life-long readers would be a worthy accomplishment.

poem not diploma

At the end of an MFA in Poetry, they shouldn’t give you a diploma. They should hand you a framed copy of the one poem you’re willing to call an emblem of your literary merit.

gray crowd

If MFA programs are attracting so many eager young poets, why is it that the audience at so many poetry readings is filled with graying elders?

masthead

The program hired a masthead name not a poet, and certainly not a teacher.

low-responsibility MFA

The low-responsibility MFA program

In these stressful times for young adults there is a need for a new kind of MFA program. The low-responsibility MFA program puts the student in control his/her MFA experience. Students are encouraged but not required to fall into a curriculum that involves any or none of the following pursuits—

• Getting a Tattoo: A Life-Long Accomplishment & Balancing One’s Piercings for Less Neck Pain


• The Tardy Muse: Strategies for Killing Time While Waiting for Inspiration


• Couch-Surfing Across America in the Kerouac Style


• Libraries Are Labyrinths: Getting Lost in the Stacks for Fun (Bring a Snack)


• Thrift-Store Safari: Developing A Good Eye for Bargains in Black


• Go Green Ghost: No Car, No House, Means Minimal Environmental Impact (Carbon in Pencils is Okay)


• Portrait of An Artist: Mastering the Slouch, the Pout, and the Ability to Stare Into Space for Hours on End


• Weekly Playshops: The antiWorkshop for Playing With Words (Location & Time to Be Announced When The Spirit Moves)

Teachers and assigned mentors will keep their distance so as not to stifle the free-wheeling creativity of their students. Students will self-report their progress toward a degree and upon completion of their variable terms of study will optionally present ‘some ideas that they had for poems’ to the director. The director is authorized to grant degrees liberally and without prejudice in respect of the diversity of student experiences and the efforts they have not undertaken.

Tuition will be billed directly to a parental or guardian credit card. Sorry no refunds for early withdrawal or student’s inability to attend because there is no way to tell whether any student is around or not. Note: This school complies fully with ‘non-interference policy’ of The Federation.