With a tired tale/tail...
I want to finish the post I abbreviated a few days back. I don't think I've ever done this before, written about my Iowa experience, but I TOTALLY WOULD anywhere... Lord knows I talk about it too often, and maybe it'd help me unload the ensuing/ongoing baggage...
I came to Iowa in 1998, from Sticksville State (as I called it on FOETRY) AKA the University of TN at Chattanooga, which was an incredible undergrad experience with an amazing undergrad workshop led by the insistant-grueling-loving-tyrant/force of nature that is Richard Jacksoon...
In undergrad I'd learned that people who love poetry also love talking about poetry with others. I'd learned how good it was to have a community. I'd learned to play with words, criticize freely, take criticism well, and fight for what I cared about. I'd learned that poetry matters, even if only to a select few...
In grad school I met the Ivy League, trust-funds, nepotism and HUGE ambitions. I discovered/grew a massive chip-on-the-shoulder. I credit the chip to people discussing fellowships and publications more than poems. I credit this to peers uninterested in a girl from TN who hadn't yet read Ashbery. Horrors! I credit this to folks unwilling to recognize the difference between ignorance and stupidity... folks unwilling to consider that maybe while they'd been reading Ashbery, I'd been reading something else, something I'd love to tell them about if they gave me a chance.
In "week one" we were sorted into workshops, and I landed with a particular split-ended diva. I also landed with a group of students who would, the following year, produce 5 first-books. Three had already published in Paris Review and admitted to knowing Mr. Howard. Two had completed an MFA somewhere else and admitted, unabashedly, to attending Iowa to make connections. Half had attended Ivy league schools. Two had finished Fulbrights. Two were completing PhDs while studying at Iowa. That's out of a class of thirteen!
In week one I was also informed, after one of these peers had read ONE of my poems, that I "wasn't addressing post-modernism in the wake of Ashbery" and he also told me that if I wasn't doing that, he couldn't see what I was doing. He said he didn't get "the point." This happened after a night of drinking, in my own apartment!
It should be said that this same delightful/enlightened man also once said to me, while watching a delicate Asian woman bend over a pool table to take a shot, that she was "the kind of girl you want to fuck up the ass," or (after a too-long-pause, "at least do doggie-style."
Charming.
So, as the years (two long ones) went by, and these same folks (who so generously explained the-way-things-work to me) were rewarded with special attentions, books deals, teaching gigs, invitations to private parties, and popularity... I lost interest.
I decided that if that was the way-it-worked, I didn't want it to work for me. It seemed to me that the more clearly I saw the LADDER (to success) in the sky, the less I wrote. And it seemed to me that if there's a ladder in the sky, one is likely to eventually miss a step. I figured I shouldn't connect my ability to write with that ladder. If I did, I'd quit writing when I slipped.
Right?
I mean, if five of thirteen people get that first step, the first book, only a few of them are likely to make the next step, the teaching gig. And then, of those few, who gets a second book? Who gets a Pulitzer? I'd rather just write I think...
But the whole MFA model didn't suggest how to write outside/ beyond the ladder.
So I wrote country songs, kids books, music reviews, essays. I wrote until one day I wrote a poem. And now I'm a poet again, but a poet unwilling to measure my "poetness" by my publication credits.
I will say to those shopping MFAs that Jim Galvin once said to me, "Your classs is one of the smartest I can remember, and also the meanest." And the folks currently in the workshop (whom I know since I'm back in Iowa now) can't relate when i tell my stories. They all seem nice, and friendly, and supportive.
And I'll also remark that Iowa gives everyone a financial aid package... a good one, and that Iowa-living is cheap. And I'll say that fiction always seems less prickly to me than poetry, in terms of students... In fact, I'd highly recommend the workshop to most anyone... after I gave them a little speech about writing to write...
Because I believe a workshop is shaped by the students and faculty, and right now they all seem pretty great, faults aside... now that Jorie is gone... So I do credit her with much of the ugliness I experienced... I do think she created much of it with unusual favoritism and rarely-justified opinions.
I think she was totally absorbed in language and politics, so much so that she wasn't able to see the effect she had on others. I think "community" was not of interest to her, and that she had grown up in such an aristocracy that she couldn't relate to people who didn't perceive themselves as "above the mortal realm."
I also think she was brilliant, and that she taught me a ton. And for those things I thank her.
But when it was all over, I spent more time shaking her off than I did learning from her. And whatever she taught me, she could have taught me without disregard for the world, without making me feel like dirt. She could have paid some attention to the politics she was standing at the center of... She could have been accountable.
In the end, what do I think? Poetry DOES save lives. It also forms them. It also comments on them.
Poetry matters. I believe in poetry, that it has a place in the world, despite my MFA, not because of it. And coming through that wall of fire is what makes me know I'm a writer now, whatever else I am. Honestly, I don't think I could say that if not for my MFA experience. Am I confused? A little. Do I judge Jorie a little? Yes. Unfairly? Maybe. But that was my experience and I'm allowed to tell you about it.
Given the chance, would I do it differently, go elsewhere? Would I skip the chance to learn those things?
Nope. Not a chance!
