Nin Andrews: How to Write the MFA Poem

Tom Clark, on his estimable blog today, posts Nin Andrews's must-read "Learning to Write the MFA Poem." (Click here.) We printed the poem in its entirety on February 22, 2010, as you'll see if you use this link, but I can't resist offering this excerpt:

there is a certain kind of poem I was taught to write
when I was earning what my husband calls my mail-order degree
from a low-res program in the Northeast.  And I guess
I would call this kind of poem an MFA poem,
though the truth is, I never learned to write one very well
(though this is one of them, or is trying to be),
but I do see them everywhere now, these MFA poems,
which I despise, not because the poems are bad
but because I was taught how to write them
by this asshole professor (he was such a creep)
who was abusive to women, mostly,
fucked with their heads if not their bodies,
you know the type.  Back then
the women took whatever he dished out
because he was famous I guess.
I hated that, and how he would write poems
about being an asshole, which he was and is,
and about everything and anything else
because, he would explain, everything is happening at once,
so everything is happening in his poems, and happening so fast,
that the past, present, and future are all there in the poems
though nothing is ever really happening
because the poems are usually in some static place

The next stanza takes the poem to that particular place and does amazing things with the set-up. It's a tour de force -- the truth, the poetry, and the parody are one. Mega kludos, Nin.

I remember writing a poem called "The Guggenheim Poem," aping the kind of poems people used to write on their fellowship year funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The poems uusally took place in Italy -- in Venice, often, but sometimes Florence or Rome, with side trips to Siena, and maybe Arezzo, and certainly Rapollo, and once in a while Naples. The poet had gone to a museum in a flimsy skirt in the fierce heat and the eyes of the men were upon her as she walked on the hot brick or cobblestone streets and she wore sunglasses and imagined she was Audrey Hepburn but all pretense and fantasy fell away when she came face to face with the Titian of Venus and Adonis or the David of Donatello in Florence or Piero's madonna and child in Urbino or a Giorgione self-portrait in Venice, which she saw as a vision of her father or her husband, she's not sure which, though she has spent many hours analyzing the possibilities, but this she knows this: it was a sudden flash, an epiphany even, like seeing a broken statue and realizing you had to change your life. -- DL

Comments

[Laura Orem]

Nin, I'll pay you a bazillion bucks if you whisper the professor's name in my ear.

[Leslie McGrath]

That professor certainly sounds familiar. I'll up the ante: a bazillion dollars and a dozen ears of corn!

I love the poem, Nin, and David's comments about the classic post-Guggenheim poem as well.

[John Norton]

The professor's initials will suffice, but of course the poem applies to so many.

[Andrea]

Not. . .
like. . .
Breadloaf.

[Keith Gaboury]

The universal phrase of the MFA gives the impression that there's one single type of poem accepted in all MFA programs. However, I believe this fails to take into account conservative vs. liberal programs. Personally, I earned an MA at San Francisco State University. No surprise at all, they're very much open to experimental poetry. I'm now in Emerson College's MFA program. I've definitely sensed a little bit of resistance trying out different poetic styles i.e. if it should be even categorized as poetry. There is a variety.

[Keith Gaboury]

The universal phrase of the MFA poem gives the impression that there's one single type of poem accepted in all MFA programs. However, I believe this fails to take into account conservative vs. liberal programs. Personally, I earned an MA at San Francisco State University. No surprise at all, they're very much open to experimental poetry. I'm now in Emerson College's MFA program. I've definitely sensed a little bit of resistance trying out different poetic styles i.e. if it should be even categorized as poetry. There is a variety.