“There are now about 200 graduate creative-writing programs in the United States, and more than a thousand undergraduate ones. With an average of ten poetry students in each graduate section, these programs alone will produce about 20,000 accredited professional poets … Continue reading →

“Death, of course, is popular with us. To major in English is to major in death.”

“What is it about poets? Even in the pantheon of troubled artists, poets tend to be perceived as singularly despairing and subject to bad ends.”

“this small and fragile enterprise, contemporary poetry”

“Kay Boyle, late of San Francisco State, opined in these pages not long ago that all creative writing programs ought to be abolished by law.”

“Kay Boyle once published a piece arguing that ‘all creative-writing programs ought to be abolished by law.’ She taught creative writing for sixteen years at San Francisco State.”

“Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem.”

“I’ve got poetry in my fingertips.”

“The work of art is not a gem, as some schools of criticism would insist, but truly a lens… We look through it for the purified and honestly offered spirit of the artist.”