"MFA programs are still the best way we have to make sure that people who want to become writers shut the fuck up, sit down, and spend a couple, three years writing a lot. That means something very important."

Amen.

a confession, a rant, and a ramble

Kristy loves her blog, but I'm obsessed with mine. I'm a little embarrassed every time I look at my archives and realize that I post almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. It seems to be the ultimate form of narcissiscm to think people actually care what I have to say that often.

And then I get annoyed when everyone else doesn't blog as often as I do. I need something to read! As if the 300 and some books immediately to my left don't count as reading material. What can I say? I like to know what poets who actully get published on a regular basis think...maybe they'll rub off on me. Maybe, by reading some editor's blog, I can figure out the right poems to send. Maybe I'm just lonely and should start calling my friends when I have the urge to commune with my psuedo-internet-friends. Maybe.

***

Also, I've been seeing a lot these days about people being anti-MFA, and frankly, it annoys me. All right, hold on. I'm not saying if you want to be a writer you have to get one, I'm just saying, if you don't want one, can't afford one, or whatever, stop telling people who do, and can, that they shouldn't. Doing this was absolutely the right decision for me and if I wasn't here, I'd still be working in HR, trying to write a crappy romance novel, and I wouldn't have ever realized that my real passion is poetry.

Okay, so it is expensive. My education is costing me about as much as a small house on the poor side of Akron. But my education is going to last a hell of a lot longer than that house. And it won't get termites. Bad analogy, I know. But it's an investment--in me. Not in my career, b/c we all know how lucrative that is going to be. I think it's better to be poor at 26 and loving what I'm doing than it was to be financially stable at 23 and completely lost emotionally and mentally.

So, if you're a writer and you're lucky enough to find a community of writers that you respect, you're lucky enough to have the discipline and the time to study the craft and practice and revise on your own, then congratulations. I needed structure, guidance, and support. Not deadlines...those are arbitrary. I can give myself deadlines and I can follow them, but if I wasn't in school I'd just keep writing the same thing over and over again because I couldn't figure out on my own what wasn't working.

Really, I think the whole debate is about as stupid as whether chocolate or vanilla is better. It's a matter of opinion, and I get mad whenever I hear people spouting off opinions as fact. (Pot & kettle? Perhaps)

And that's enough of that.

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I've been reading a lot this week, along with my crazy fluke of prolificness. Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses, Philip Levine's What Work Is, and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Do you hear "which one of these is not like the other?" from Sesame Street in your head? Me too. But I decided my persona reads Hemingway, which means now I have to. I read The Sun Also Rises when I was a junior in high school and loved it, but when I took a Hemingway and Fitzgerald seminar in college, I felt like Hemingway paled next to Fitzgerald and didn't enjoy his stuff very much. So I'm going back to it, to see what I might have missed. I like that it's quick reading, but still it's not coming to life for me. Maybe the memoir isn't the right place to start. It seems I can sum it up like this: "went to the cafe. went to the track. talked to gertrude stein. went back to the cafe. talked to another famous writer. had sex with my wife. went to the cafe." There are some interesting moments when he talks about writing, but for the most part...eh.

I've always felt like a little bit of a fraud because I don't like most of the fiction that English majors are supposed to rave about. Vonnegut? He's alright. Faulkner? Never finished anything I was supposed to read of his. Sentences and paragraphs are not synonyms. Henry James? I'd rather poke my eyeballs out than pick up The American again. I did love Steinbeck's East of Eden, but wasn't nearly as impressed with The Pearl. Grapes of Wrath? Haven't read it. Why can't I get my head around the stuff I'm "supposed" to like? Is there something wrong with me, or does everyone else just pretend to like it? Am I the only one who's no good at faking it?