Wow. This is just AWEsome. I guffawed at least a couple of times.

For starters, let me just say that I'm responding here after just having read Wright's diatribe, and will respond further after checking out the rest of the article. In short, invective aside, I actually agree with most of Wright's assessment of the academic establishment of poetry, poetry as career with its own version of the corporate ladder, as opposed to the solitary and profoundly consuming discipline/devotion/meditation that is poetry. Despite the findings of many contests, prizes, journal editors, reviewers, and program admission boards the world over, poetry isn't something you win at. And if, by chance, one thinks it is, then perhaps what one is pursuing is something entirely other than poetry. We might think of a Visible Poetry vs. an Invisible Poetry, a la Augustine.

Of course, Wright blunders grandly into one of my favorite pitfalls so prominently practiced in writing programs and indeed in all aesthetic arenas, which is to assume that a) there is a universally recognizable standard which sets apart good from bad from mediocre verse and that b) clearly, one's own tastes conform perfectly to said standard. That he takes that tumble doesn't surprise.

What is really somewhat staggering, appalling, even while it induces gleeful cackles, is the pure vitriol of this rant, and the ranter's willingness to attack individuals personally, cruelly, and by name -- also without offering any substantive argumentation, it should be noted:

"Any subdoormat MFA poet, like Melanie Braverman, by being a nice mommie can succeed at Brandeis because real talent means nothing now"

... nothing but ad hominem there, for example.

Also, it seems quite clear from the profusion of glaring typos, that Wright is FBRWI (facebook-raging-while-intoxicated). Whether it was whiskey, wine, pills, or merely rage that impaired him, he was clearly not operating with half a writer's keyboard prowess when he dashed this off.

However, despite what may amount to offenses against human decency, Wright never herein performs outside of the office of a poet, either by being cruel, by throwing a tantrum, by committing logical fallacies, or by hurling sobriety to the wind. In fact, he may have been performing that role all the more deftly, one of the many reasons why poets should always be watched closely -- if, that is, anyone at all is paying attention to them. And flinging about abuse, as television is constantly reminding us, is one of the best ways to draw a crowd.

Regarding MFA programs, I remain powerfully ambivalent about them. Olive and I spent a good decade of mutually administered therapy decompressing and recovering from the many small wounds, disillusions, delusions and disservices we received while there, yet all the while, we never stopped uncovering new insights and invaluable experiences we'd acquired along the way. I suppose that an MFA Program is like any major life trauma in this way.

The problem of how to display a society's properly high value of poetry in the academy without creating an artificial and inorganic from the top down version of what should be a function of natural human culture remains unsolved, and to my knowledge, relatively few are even aware of it, or consider it to be a problem. I am glad that the establishment of poetry exists, and I am glad to be operating apart from it.

We studied with Carolyn Forche, as a sidenote. I'm certainly not going to make any statement about her financial or social standing in life, or anyone else's, for that matter. She was kind to us, though, I feel like I should mention, and we both took valuable insights away from our studies with her. Also, while I'm not interested in ranking the importance of her verse against all that of the last hundred years, I do consider it a valuable contribution.