Gigantic. Gigantic. A big, big love.
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 08:28AM I've been reading these guys all morning. HTMLGIANT is like the Daily Show for poetry, hilariously calling out pretentious poetry bullshit of all kinds. Interviews. Submission Guidelines. Is there a Colbert Report equivalent out there? Someone playing the role of poetry asshole while satirizing poetry assholes? Dear god I hope so.
Simultaneously, I've been fantasizing about what they would say (I wish I were wearing a bathrobe) about the Creative Writing PhD...trend / explosion / whatever. Not so much the programs themselves...reading and writing for another 4 years on a secluded poetry island with dope professors and fellow poets sounds dreamy, assuming more crippling debt isn't involved (inevitably an MA and an MFA are already in hand at this stage). But last night a friend of mine was stressing out about her personal statement for one of these things. This friend of mine has a gazillion terrific chapbooks out and a forthcoming full-length book. Does this not seem fucking crazy to anyone else? In most every other discipline, you go get a PhD to learn how to write the books, no? But now you have people with books teaching people with books how to write books? Come again?!?! And I have friends (also with chapbooks and books and who run journals and presses) getting REJECTED from Creative Writing PhD programs. Seriously?!?! What must that letter say, "Yeah...sorry. You make our professors too self-conscious about the size of their poetry junk?" Unbelievable. But the kicker is, I now have friends (with chapbooks and at this point multiple books...who run presses and journals) who have completed said programs and are getting like one friggin' interview!!! This is criminal.
Mid-post caviat: The word "friends" makes me sound like a name-dropping asshole. Well, minus the actual names. The word "friends" is being used loosely for the sake of this post. You frickin' know what I mean. Shut up.
Anydoogiehowser, point being that why the fuck are we doing this to ourselves (I say "our," 1. because I am such an empathetic friend and have so many friends who are such awesome poets, thus making me a more valuable human than most...clearly, and 2. because I imagine that somewhere down the road, I'll run myself through the same wringer). I'd like to think it is for the purest of reasons...simply a time and place to immerse ourselves in Poetry Spa...ie to get smarter, read and write more and better. But I can't stop thinking that it is all about the j-o-b market. Someone help me out here.
Post-post caviat: suck my itallics!
Reader Comments (13)
"playing the role of poetry asshole while satirizing poetry assholes"...isn't that jim berhle?
actually, now that i think of it: whatever happened to that guy?
nah...he never pretended to be the people he was satirizing. i think my use of "asshole" was confusing. i meant people doing laughable "P"oetry things w/o an ounce of self-awareness.
Hello Black Ocean Blog--
I'm the guy with the Pig book.
Good points Chris.
Also, most schools want a diverse skill set from their writers--like an MFA and a PhD in Lit or Cultural studies. So getting a PhD in creative writing means they have to pay you more for less. Yep, it's come to that point.
This is why I want an MLS. I can't wait to explain why watching porn in the library computer lab is definitely legal.
Yes, but what is going to happen to all these MA and MFA and PhD programs as the economy falls? Is it really necessary to get that degree? Poetry is necessary, however, when there is an economic or a physical depression. So, I think it will all even out soon. Also, what about that post MFA Teaching degree at Antioch? Shouldn't an MFA teach you how to teach?
Yeah, Joe...It makes sense that an MFA grad with tons of pubs and books and journals and presses would need a PhD for something other than what they are already apparently proficient at...critical stuff/theory/etc.
Amy, in some MFA programs, the MFA students teach undergrad poetry workshops. So they don't only learn how to teach, supposedly, but they actually DO teach.
This post presents a pretty unfair caricature of the Ph.D. with creative dissertation, of which the sole purpose is not to teach people "how to write books."
The Ph.D. with creative dissertation is in all other respects a scholarly degree; the course requirements are nearly identical to literature tracks, except for the workshops. But this post treats it as if it were a mere extension of the MFA, for which students spend most of their time in workshops and are required to take only a couple of non-workshop classes. Not to step on anyone's toes, but the academic standard for MFA students tends to be a universal joke among English graduate students of any other concentration.
The post suggests that those who have publications should be a "shoe in" for graduate creative writing programs, but then goes on to argue for the absurdity of requiring publications for entrance into such programs, effectively contradicting itself. If those who have already started a professional publishing career do not need to go through a graduate program, then wouldn't it make sense that graduate programs are declining to accept them?
Also, it is offhandedly suggested that these publishing masters are rejected because of insecure and inept faculty. Firstly, this strikes me as just the cookie-cutter, perennial complaint against Academe by those who are not in Academe. Secondly, considering this indictment, it is equally fair to suggest that these applicants are rejected because the faculty are tired of dealing with egotistical students who don't think that they have anything to learn because of their CV publication list.
The choice is simple. If all one wants to do is write things and send them off to be published, then one certainly does not need a fancy graduate degree, let alone a college degree at all. To succeed in a graduate program, especially the Ph.D. with creative dissertation, much more than a slightly impressive list of publications is needed.
Trey,
This is totally fair. Mine was a snarky rant for sure. Fueled in part by someone with two degrees that were supposedly "terminal."
Is there a difference between a PhD with Creative Dissertation (the way you state it) and a Creative Writing PhD or a PhD in Creative Writing (the way I think of it)? I mean I have an MA with a creative thesis, but it is an English degree and had all the same requirements that folks with critical theses had. So when you say PhD with creative dissertation, are the requirements all the same as they are for folks getting critical PhD's with the only difference the actual dissertation? If so, then I stand somewhat corrected. If not, that phrasing itself seems a bit snarky.
Also, all MFA's aren't all the same. The required hours and number of lit courses vary greatly, so classifying them all under the umbrella of "soft degree" is also a bit skewed. But point taken, certainly.
Either way, my questions still remain. I think supplementing the writing skills one already has with more reading...theory/crit/etc...is excellent and pure. And like I said, I've been toying with the idea myself. But c'mon. Let's not pretend that this isn't at least in part a total hoop created and/or proliferated by the market, the flood of poets who previously would have qualified for a tenure track job (MFA+book), no? And made more obvious by the fact that an MA + MFA + BOOKS + INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE + PHD doesn't equal reasonable job placement? So it's a broken hoop, no?
And the problem with the system seems to me that writers are earning degrees which the very University's granting them don't seem to value. If a University deems a relatively inexperienced MFA student fresh out of undergrad fit to teach undergraduate workshops, then eventually grants them an MFA, which theoretically has given them the skills which has helped them successfully publish their book and then says, upon graduation, you are no longer fit to teach undergrad workshops, go get another degree, and then maybe still you won't even be qualified to get an interview, does it not seem something is very wrong? I mean, they already taught their like 6 years and 2 books ago or something.
To respond to the fact that I actually think faculty rejects applicants out of insecurity...I don't. I was just making a point that in no other discipline I can think of are the publishing records of applicant and institution, and then student/mentee and teacher/mentor, so indistinguishable (in many cases) from one another. I would have to think this would cause some awkward moments.
And when I said you get a PhD to learn to write the books, I was speaking from an academic point of view where the publish or perish idea hinges on the first book and subsequent publications (something that many Creative Writing PhD applicants already have under their belt).
You said: "If those who have already started a professional publishing career do not need to go through a graduate program, then wouldn't it make sense that graduate programs are declining to accept them?"
Does this mean that folks are getting rejected for being overqualified? Which would be honorable...giving slots to those who need them most. But I just don't see that happening. The criteria for what makes one eligible for these slots seems to be increasing, not plateauing as this would suggest. But maybe I'm skewed by the stories I know.
Post-post commentary: What follows unravels.
This is also going to sound contradictory (I'll plead Whitman every time this happens), but I think the cultural idea that we can't make a decision on individuals, we can't say "no," until we absolutely have to, has crept into academia (academe). There are too many MFA's to say no to, so let's create PhD programs. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would project that soon there will be a degree beyond PhD. But really, it seems to me that departments should just pick the people whose work and experience and demeanor they like best and get on with it. If after an MA (where teaching happens in some cases) and an MFA (where teaching happens in some cases) and industry experience and
I didn't know you could run out of room on a comment. So, to continue...
and significant publications a University still doesn't want to hire you, why would they all of a sudden after 4 more years? The answer: they don't necessarily.
So what does one do in a PHD program with a creative dissertation? Research literature and then write a creative dissertation, or is there a research thesis too? How academically rigorous is a PHD creative writing program and what are the requirements to get into one?
I have never thought about PHD creative writing programs before. Studio Art PHD programs are popping up too, and Art in America wrote all about them in the May 2007 issue.
Rilke got his PhD in creative writing from Houston, i think.
Bummer. I was looking forward to hearing what it took to succeed in a graduate program. ESPECIALLY the PhD with creative dissertation.
Chris,
I think that we're articulating the same problem, and just approaching it by different critiques. I contend that Academia isn't equipped to handle so many qualified applicants, which is why many are grasping at straws despite insane resumes.
I'm actually on the receiving end of this as well, attempting to gain entrance to a doctoral program with a CV that even 5 years ago would probably have made me a "shoe in" to at least 1 or 2 programs. But because there are just so damn many people (top programs report anywhere between 400 and 600 applicants per year for approximately 10 slots), one pretty much needs to be worthy of a tenure-track job application just to get into even a mid-ranked Ph.D. program in the first place.
In short, I'd say that the problem is overpopulation, and I've read that the worst is still yet to come. Apparently, in the next couple of years, the aggregate graduating high school class will be the largest that it ever has been, and since college has become just a mandatory stage of life as opposed to a deliberate choice made by only those who truly care, there will be even more and more degree-seekers, which will translate into even more and more graduate degree-seekers, and then more and more academic job seekers.
Inflation follows from overpopulation. More and more people with publications means that publications aren't worth near as much as they used to be. No one seems to be impressed anymore by a graduate student landing a scholarly publication. And creative publications? If we're to take Silliman at his word when he reports approximately 20,000 publishing poets in the U.S. alone, well, then, who cares about creative publications? Awards, grants, fellowships, teaching experience, etc. are also all suffering from this inflation qua overpopulation.
Of course, I did make a pretty crass blanket statement about MFA degree programs' requirements, and I know that there are many that are quite impressive. But then, there just so damn many of those, too....As one who straddled the line between scholarship and creative writing, I always got to hear my "scholarly" peers complain about allegedly lax academic standards for creative writers. Realistically, regardless of the discipline, there are always those people who seem to slip through the cracks of so-called academic standards.
By "Ph.D. with creative dissertation," I mean that the area of specialization is creative writing in a genre, just as the MA and MFA degrees in creative writing. I'm distinguishing between the requirements for MFAs and PhDs because in many programs, aside from 3 or 4 workshops, the PhD requirements are just as academically rigorous for creative writing students.
The idea behind this degree is that because of creative writing overpopulation, universities will replace positions solely in creative writing with positions that require the faculty to teach literature classes as well. I've seen that this is already the case with many major R-1 universities, even with "creative" faculty teaching graduate-level literature classes.
While MFA students certainly are encouraged to critically engage their own and others' work, I would risk the generalization that typically this does not extend beyond the (very) contemporary, or beyond the niche of writers by whom the degree-holder is most directly influenced.
This may be symptomatic of the larger interdisciplinary push that may or may not be somewhat of a corrective mechanism for overpopulation and inflation, but what always keeps me from pursuing my critiques of these problems to their logical conclusion is the self-doubt that I might very well be one of those who are overpopulating and inflating the system, regardless of how much I am personally invested in it.
I'm also ambivalent about publications. It might be that admissions committees are ignoring them (especially creative publications) because of another effect of overpopulation: a lot of good writing is passed over by journals and publishers, while some lackluster writing is consistently put out onto the market. How can a journal help it, really, when they're getting 10,000 submissions per year with a largely volunteer staff of already-overworked people?
In the end, what does a published (chap)book mean? Either one won a contest, which is pretty significant considering that the manuscript had to make it through 3 or 4 people while competing against hundreds of other manuscripts, or, one attracted the attention of a publisher without any contest bells and whistles. Again, though, overpopulation has made it almost impossible to be fairly considered without a contest if one is an unknown writer, regardless of the quality of one's work. Consider why the standard cover letter is simply a grocery list of one's most impressive publications.
To get to my point, publication (contest or not) just means that 3 or 4 people with the means to publish thought that your material is worth publishing over a lot of other material, which may or may not be deserving, but not AS deserving as yours. Silliman's numbers might be way off, but considering the massive amount of creative writing flooding the market, just how valuable is a publication, even if it's a book? How many books are published each year? It's all starting to go the way of the Lira.
To conclude my unnecessarily digressive post, there's just so damn much out there--so many people, so much writing--that everything seems to be turned on its head.