It's perhaps only the fact that nothing useful has yet been said about this great secret that keeps us beavering away at all the nutty things that continue to conceal it from us.
what WAS that old saying: nothing in, nothing out? or as I posit it:
in between the two nothings is everything else
ahhhh, "gibberish" haven't seen or used that word in a gaggle of decades... nice to see that there are yet a few Olde Pharts yet around. Damn few of us left beside the red rain next to the Radio Flyer waiting in the rain to glaze a plump Rhode Island Red ! well, Y'all keep on truckin'.
HOT OF THE PRESS: “Two whistleblowing undercover muckraking poets, T.C. and E.B., were expelled from the university’s course in creative writing for exposing the appalling mental conditions running rampant in the recesses of Professor Huuklyeand Cinquor's transmogrified mind. Apparently, the old prof proved to be a turkey, which explains why he spoke gobbledygook rather than clucking when presenting Doc Williams’ famous minimalist tour-de-force.”
As I recall, Elliot was one of the pioneers of writing programs but if he were still alive today, I think he would have second thoughts about helping to create the monster machine these programs have become, don't you think?
yes I do....a cpl of years ago I looked at the Hopkin's write-up about the Writing Seminars ... hells-bells ... it s now something called an MFA program and appears to be just another fucking way into that "I'm so well read and tested" Credentialist crap.
you know, Elliot spent 3-4 months EVERY year in Greece....I think that he had a lease on a place for 99 years...
was just looking over some things in a chest from those days (looking over early notes re: Song of Chin) and came across a stack of notes re what I was working on typed on little slips of paper that he made ... a gentle, knowing man with beautiful white hair etc..
just reading, seeing that an old friend, Shulie Firestone, died yesterday ...
The abomination which is known as "creative writing school poetry" makes all other scorned forms of the art look good in comparison, even greeting card verse.
These schools are citadels of bourgeois-elitist power branding and in respect to the art have no more of value to offer than does an Android Smartphone.
I tell yuh after a 35+ years absence from all of this... I'm finding it (and everything else) is what seems to have evolved in all of this into a Big Poetry & nBig Writing Programs
that old Right of Passage thing has gotten to the sickening point of where damn the poem full speed ahead with a boat-load of horse-shit credentials:
Credentialists passing out credentials.... for a fee, for a job ... for prestege that leads to (what ever the literary egos demand from those sheep following them.
they seen to (mostly) twist things around twist and bend things into 'poems' that are little more than standardized/systematic, rhetorical language (and I am NOT speaking towards a rant & rave shout-out at what is called l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poetry (or poets) (there IS good 'stuff' everywhere just waiting to be caught on a hook and brought up from the depths wiggling into the light too much the thrust is towards a display of even a 'shout out' that "we 'understand' accuse we gots the credentials
and y'all students taking my Creative Writing Workshop 322 Tu, Th 7:15 - 9:45 WILL meet in the cafeterias courtyard for whine and cheese bring two poems to read:
they MUST fit into the parameters as outlined in my handout #123 you DO remember that?
of course you do: the poem must fit into
this departments "intellectual", agreed-upon no-nonsenseness (horse shit) by our Committee of Excellence
damn it s gotten to the point where even those outside of academia outside of these 35,000 (expletive) Creative Writing Programs are academics... me thinks we've become a culture that is educated FAR BEYOND our intelligence..
of course there ARE exceptions to this trend... I can name five... and three of them are either too old or dead to give a rat's ass about all of this ;
Clint Eastwood's tipsoid riff the other night at the Mittshow appeared to be (??) an untoward explosion of creative something or other. But wait, just last week somebody who's allegedly in the know declared that "uncreative genius" is the current secret to something-or-otherhood. And in any case do you suppose that man with the mythically large handgun would be capable of typing in all the e=q=u=a=l signs one has to be able to execute in order to become a "real" something-or-other any more? How very t=i=r=e=s=o=m=e it all is, really. Please, just shoot me.
It's perhaps only the fact that nothing useful has yet been said about this great secret that keeps us beavering away at all the nutty things that continue to conceal it from us.
ReplyDeleteBut poets... always the whistleblowers.
what WAS that old saying: nothing in, nothing out?
ReplyDeleteor
as I posit it:
in between the two nothings is everything else
ahhhh, "gibberish" haven't seen or used that word in a gaggle of decades... nice to see that there are yet a few Olde Pharts yet around. Damn few of us left beside the red rain next to the Radio Flyer waiting in the rain to glaze a plump Rhode Island Red ! well, Y'all keep on truckin'.
HOT OF THE PRESS: “Two whistleblowing undercover muckraking poets, T.C. and E.B., were expelled from the university’s course in creative writing for exposing the appalling mental conditions running rampant in the recesses of Professor Huuklyeand Cinquor's transmogrified mind. Apparently, the old prof proved to be a turkey, which explains why he spoke gobbledygook rather than clucking when presenting Doc Williams’ famous minimalist tour-de-force.”
ReplyDeletepee est:
ReplyDeleteso after i got my MA from Eliott Coleman at Hopkins in 1972 I STILL didn't know what from
an hole in the ground
as
all that I did to get that degree (a significant credential that got me where I em today) was
"get in my bag and do my thing"
I fig-yored that continuing on in the program an gettin' my Pee Ached Dee would be a cinch &
Peachy Cream..
at this news of my intentions Elliott said:
"Ed, you gotta be REALLY SMART to get a Phd from Johns Hopkins. Besides, it will ruin your poetry...
and you."
you know (of) Elliott Coleman ?
As I recall, Elliot was one of the pioneers of writing programs but if he were still alive today, I think he would have second thoughts about helping to create the monster machine these programs have become, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteyes I do....a cpl of years ago I looked at the Hopkin's write-up about the Writing Seminars
ReplyDelete... hells-bells ... it s now something called an MFA program and appears to be just another fucking
way into that "I'm so well read and tested" Credentialist crap.
you know, Elliot spent 3-4 months EVERY year in Greece....I think that he had a lease on a place for 99 years...
was just looking over some things in a chest from those days (looking over early notes re: Song of Chin) and came across a stack of notes re what I was working on typed on little slips of paper that he
made ... a gentle, knowing man with beautiful white hair etc..
just reading, seeing that an old friend, Shulie Firestone, died yesterday ...
The abomination which is known as "creative writing school poetry" makes all other scorned forms of the art look good in comparison, even greeting card verse.
ReplyDeleteThese schools are citadels of bourgeois-elitist power branding and in respect to the art have no more of value to offer than does an Android Smartphone.
I tell yuh after a 35+ years absence from all of this...
ReplyDeleteI'm finding it (and everything else) is
what seems to have evolved in all of this into
a Big Poetry & nBig Writing Programs
that old Right of Passage thing has gotten to the sickening point of where
damn the poem full speed ahead with a boat-load of horse-shit credentials:
Credentialists passing out credentials.... for a fee, for a job ... for prestege that leads to
(what ever the literary egos demand from those sheep following them.
they seen to (mostly) twist things around twist and bend things into 'poems' that are little more than standardized/systematic, rhetorical language (and I am NOT speaking towards a rant & rave shout-out at what is called
l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poetry (or poets) (there IS good 'stuff' everywhere just waiting to be caught on a hook and brought up from the depths wiggling into the light
too much the thrust is towards a display of even a 'shout out' that "we 'understand' accuse we gots the credentials
and y'all students taking my Creative Writing Workshop 322 Tu, Th 7:15 - 9:45 WILL meet in the
cafeterias courtyard for whine and cheese bring two poems to read:
they MUST fit into the parameters as outlined in my handout #123 you DO remember that?
of course you do:
the poem must fit into
this departments "intellectual", agreed-upon
no-nonsenseness (horse shit)
by our Committee of Excellence
damn it s gotten to the point where even those outside of academia outside of these 35,000
(expletive) Creative Writing Programs are academics... me thinks we've become a culture that is
educated FAR BEYOND our intelligence..
of course there ARE exceptions to this trend... I can name five... and three of them are either too old or dead to give a rat's ass about all of this ;
Clint Eastwood's tipsoid riff the other night at the Mittshow appeared to be (??) an untoward explosion of creative something or other. But wait, just last week somebody who's allegedly in the know declared that "uncreative genius" is the current secret to something-or-otherhood. And in any case do you suppose that man with the mythically large handgun would be capable of typing in all the e=q=u=a=l signs one has to be able to execute in order to become a "real" something-or-other any more? How very t=i=r=e=s=o=m=e it all is, really. Please, just shoot me.
ReplyDelete