Matt Morrison has done a good job in his recently published Key Concepts In Creative Writing, of compiling terms that relate to writing that could assist students and lecturers of the subject. I balk though at the word "concepts" because what is singularly lacking in the book - a glaring omission it seems to be as a creative writing lecturer - are any concepts at all, relating to the actual subject itself. For one, "Creative Writing" should have had its own entry, discussing the origins of the idea, and how it has emerged into such a popular subject in Britain, having come over from America's Iowa workshops via UEA. Secondly, where is the concept "Workshop" itself? That is like a book on Freud that doesn't mention the analytic couch. Thirdly, there is no discussion of pedagogy. Creative Writing cannot be allowed to drift - in this climate of brutal cuts to Mickey Mouse modules (so-called basket-weaving courses) - as just a place where big name authors take Rooney-sized paydays and mutter anecdotes and offer stale wisdom - but must remain a creative, robust, research-led discipline, complete with its own theories, methodologies, and pedagogical approaches. Palgrave could have done more to assist that process.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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