Window, not mirror – means, not end – implement, not ornament.
Window? Yes, that is what poetry is, a window, as opposed to the mirror that market forces would have us believe. They’ve gotten fat selling the notion that poetry is an easy path to brand name stardom, to becoming a charm for the bracelet on the wrist of one’s demography – for all who share the marketing bucket they’ve chosen for an identity. My generation, now obsolete, got id’d at birth! Poetry is way too big and way too important for us to let alma mater run it. We must realize utterances become cliche only because they bear sufficient truth to keep themselves alive through thick and thin. This one is apt: Those who can, do – those who can’t, teach. Before any professor of poetry addressed me, I was ten years into my freelance journalism apprenticeship; maybe that is why I was smart enough to just say no to college poetry. In 1961, I started typing summaries of televised hockey games to leave on the kitchen counter for my father to read after he and my mother returned from their usual Saturday night on the town! It was an ancient Remington that was a blast to pound on. My father was a good first audience for any writer; I knew I was doing a good job because he didn’t tell me to stop! That is how education works; the pat on the head, gold sticker on homework, is the way servility works. A year later, my ninth grade English teacher accused me of plagiarism after I waxed poetic in a composition, yet my enchantment with language has not waned, and I remain a On my infinite to-do list is an examination of the place of poetry in the academy. I want to know how it came to pass that, when I told him that I had been a student in a creative writing program run by Lewis Turco in the 1970s, he let out a hearty laugh and said, “Oh, Turco hates me!” More about Donald Hall -> E-mail contact is via my business site: ReadWebco.com; if you’d rather send a check or a postcard: Dave Read, PO Box 920, Stockbridge, MA 01262 * We have the murder of JFK on the cover to honor the fact that JFK is the last man in our highest office to exhort the nation via poetry, nimbly embedded into both his Moon speech, and his inaugural address.
just say no, kids
Poetry begins in journalism – it doesn’t end there
freelance poetic reporter without portfolio!
I became acquainted with Donald Hall in 2012 and had the pleasure of three visits with him at his famous Eagle Pond Farm. I attended his last reading and poetry talk in Nov. 2017 at the University of New Hampshire, as well as his funeral seven months later. Occupational poetry?
I plan to use part of my upcoming MacArthur loot to get to the bottom of how, up to the time The Famous Writers School was chased out of the marketplace in 1970, there were little more than a handful of creative writing programs on American college campuses, and now there are more than 800! While at Oxford, Hall befriended the sculptor Henry Moore, and thereby learned important lessons. So, why is the nation bereft of courses in Creative Chiseling? Shirley, there is a way to monetize dirt.We love e-mail