In Key with the Times

5 Comments

  1. Joseph Hutchison
    Joseph Hutchison January 6, 2011 at 3:33 pm .

    Lyle, we're on the same road here. It seems clear to me that "success" as poet has very little to do with book sales or academic connections or reputation within this or that coterie or (certainly) annual income. Edgar Guest and Rod McKuen are models of a kind, I suppose—enormously popular but fairly soon no longer read; Lorine Niedecker is another kind: a poet who wrote in relative

  2. Ed Baker
    Ed Baker January 6, 2011 at 3:55 am .

    hey Joe<br />what&#39;s an MFA? Is this what used to be an MA?<br />Does this mean that my Master&#39;s degree from The Writing Seminars 1971 Johns Hopkins is now<br />WORTHLESS? SHIT! All of those poems… down-the-drain! My credentials…KUHPUT! What will become of me? of my Master&#39;s Thesis?<br /><br />just go tell that to Eliott Coleman!

  3. Lyle Daggett
    Lyle Daggett January 6, 2011 at 3:12 am .

    The notion of &quot;success&quot; for a poet is in any case a tenuous one, I think, in the United States at least.<br /><br />A poet&#39;s first book of poems might be 30 or 40 pages, saddle-stapled (a &quot;chapbook&quot; as they&#39;re quaintly called), published by a microscopic publisher (or self-published) in an edition of 100 or 200 copies. The poet might give away more copies (maybe many

  4. Joseph Hutchison
    Joseph Hutchison January 6, 2011 at 2:24 am .

    Thanks for the link. It looks intriguing!

  5. ~im just only me~
    ~im just only me~ January 6, 2011 at 1:27 am .

    Joseph, I read this article over at Slate the other day. Was wondering if you caught it, as I think it addresses some of these things, albeit in a different light.<br /> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2275733&quot; rel="nofollow">MFA vs. NYC: America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?</a> <br />‎&quot;The point is that market forces cause some good books to go unnoticed,

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