The future is here.

So...those of us who are in two year programs are graduating in May/June! Crazy, huh?

I don't know about you all, but I'm ready to go lol. My thesis is complete. I'm working on making it a first book manuscript and preparing to start sending out to contests in a few months. So basically, I did what I came to an MFA to do. Do yall feel like you got what you wanted to get out of your MFA programs?

There is a huge question mark over Fall of 2011 though. Almost exactly like the question mark that existed during the notification season prior to starting in a program. Who will win the fellowships? Who will get residencies? Who will get jobs? Please post info as soon as you hear about notifications. I, for one, am literally dying to hear something!

On taking advice

Having studied with just about a small army of excellent teachers, I've been told my poems need to be a lot of different things: less clever, less explain-y, more rhetorically grounded, more out-rushingly imaginative, more direct, more musically cognizant, more traditionally moral, less ambitious, more ambitious, funnier, sadder, etc. etc. and etc. among many, many more pieces of advice. Almost all of them have been useful in some way or another, even if only to knowingly reject.

Teachers have cut apart poems and moved lines around, or simply cut lines, or cut everything but one line and told me to start over.

And the thing is, I generally have taken teachers' advice. Not all of it, and not every time--but often enough that I stopped myself recently and asked about one poem: this is good, but am I the reason for that?

It seems that the MFA is a time specifically designed for learning what advice to take and what advice to reject, but there are few strictures about how much is too much. After all, if one of the young artist's first concerns is finding a voice, and then no one wants to compromise his or her "voice," taking advice might be a matter of trying to understand what that voice is. But most of us are young enough that, even if we already thought we knew or are discovering what the voice is, it's still mutating, even if only a little at a time.

Which leads to my questions. One: how much advice is too much advice? Two: is advice better served focusing on the individual poems/stories or the writer in general?

Grad School Nomads

Hello everyone! I hope your semesters are wrapping up well!

I just posted an entry on my personal blog about Grad School Nomads. Check it out!

Have safe and happy holidays! And for the grad school nomads out there, drive/fly safely! :)

What is workshop for?

Here's my dirty little workshop secret: I sometimes workshop poems that may be (*gasp*) mediocre (well, maybe not mediocre--maybe only a little good). My theory is that if I only workshop my best poems, looking at those poems will be a waste of everybody's time, but if I workshop my almost-there poems most of those mediocre or maybe good poems will improve substantially.

It's also easier to make radical changes, I've found, to work that's either really fresh or been around long enough to know it needs improvement (and if it's been around that long, it's probably got more problems than I want to deal with).

This is a great strategy if my goal for workshop is to improve individual poems and identify early stumbling blocks common in my work.

Here's the philosophical conundrum: The best part of workshop is looking at all the awesome things everyone else is doing--so if everyone else is turning in awesome work that is doing awesome things, am I being selfish by not turning in as-awesome work that is not doing as-awesome things? Two caveats:

Sometimes it's boring to workshop already mostly finished really good work.

And sometimes the work we thought was really good and mostly finished it turns out might have still been really good, but still needs a lot of work. Sometimes workshopping really good poems can help you turn them amazing.

Maybe each workshop has different standards and expectations for the kind of work being brought in, but do y'all have any opinions in general on what the workshop is for?

Application season

Once again it's application season(!)

I wrote a longer post last time, this year I think I'll just hit the major attractions for the University of Houston:

(and hey, maybe some prospective students are already on this blog, considering the PhD...)

Speaking of which, most importantly, there is the dual nature of the PhD/MFA program, where students take classes together.

Houston is also the very rare affordable large city, supporting a wonderful array of reading series, museums, and other weird art events.

Fiction faculty: Robert Boswell, Antonya Nelson, Chitra Divakaruni, Mat Johnson, Alex Parsons.

Poetry faculty: Tony Hoagland, Nick Flynn, Martha Serpas, Ange Mlinko and Kevin Prufer.

Most attractively for some, we do have a history of fellowship success--last year alone including a Ruth Lilly fellow, a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at Wisconsin, a Parks fellow at Rice, and an NEA literature fellow (we just added seven more of those NEA fellowships this year--two current doctoral candidates and five alumni).

There are many, many good MFA programs out there, and certainly a number of good PhD programs as well. If the above at all encourages your interest in Houston, feel free to check us out at www.uh.edu/cwp or send me an e-mail at jsgottliebmiller (at) gmail (dot) com.

PS. Hope everyone had a happy turkey day.

Memorableness

Here's a hypothetical question that comes up in workshops, talking to professors about who you're going to study with, and occasionally among poets when they've had a little too much to drink (so, always?): Yes, that poet is great, but will anyone be talking about her/him in 100 years? Is that poet a (*gasp*) minor poet?

I think the question has its problems--yes I think most of us write in part to be remembered, but I think most of us want to be remembered only by readers who were uniquely moved by what we have written. Also, historical circumstance seems to be an arbitrary measure of a poet's quality (or critical taste).

And yet, let's say you are a minor poet. You do what you do and you do it quite well. You're always getting better. Would you evolve to reach more people, or would you see that kind of evolution as unnatural, and having nothing to do with your writings' needs or interests?

In other words, would you "try" to be a major poet?

(And I think novelist or short-story writer could be substituted for poet, above...)

Advice for MFA Applicants

by Jennifer Brown

Hello everyone! I see that MFA application season is heating up once again. I have put together a few "if only I knew then what I know now" thoughts about fiction writing samples on my personal blog HERE.

Good luck everyone!