taught right

Been lucky not to have been taught by teachers without their own ideas.

this way always then that

The education of a poet is continuous and divergent.

investigative presence

Too much emphasis on the creative aspect of the arts and not enough on the artist as an investigative presence in the world.

careful where you step

The droppings of poets were all about. Someone must have been feeding them prompts again.

hand-me-downs

Writers who teach writing by repackaging advice received from their teachers.

[After reading another craft book chockful common advice essays. Plus prompts!]

religious perpetuation

Creative writing teachers who go on repeating the same pieties they’d learned when they were students.

more lighght

The teacher had assigned the technique of ‘erasure’ as a means of creating a new text from an existing one. A lazy student picked Saroyan’s ‘lighght’ as his target text, and ended with ‘ghgh’ as his finished text. Of course he could be awarded nothing less than an A.

canon content

The canon is made of many great poems and a certain number of academic study pieces.

limits of understanding

A great poem cannot be taught, it can only be explored together intelligently.

sample audience

The workshop as focus group.

propped up

One of those books filled with insipid writing prompts for the uninspired.

exercise room

Trying to teach poetry with the ‘freeing strictures’ of exercises/prompts.

fantasy while awaiting one's turn

I read my poem and everyone in the circle puts down his/her pen. Folding their hands almost in unison, they all lean forward, listening intently, as though hoping more words will be spoken. And then I awoke from my daydream during workshop, awaiting my turn.

higher calling

The poet was not teaching poetry writing, per se, he was teaching poetry.

regurgitative poetics

Too many teachers of creative writing are content with passing on received materials instead of finding their own pedagogical texts and promoting those.

kept his plates fair

We Followers saw things from Whistler’s standpoint. If he etched a plate, we had to etch it almost exactly on Whistlerian lines. If Whistler kept his plates fair, ours were so fair that they could scarcely be seen. If Whistler adopted economy of means using the fewest possible lines, we became so nervous that we could scarcely touch the plate lest we should overelaborate.

—Mortimer Menpes, Whistler As I Knew Him (Hol Arts Book, 2009)

syllabus poetry

From the moment it was written it was syllabus poetry. A 'text' that went straight to academe without even a passing wave to an audience.