The Avant-Gardist's MFA: The Avant-Garde's Rhetorical Opposition to MFAs
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleThe Avant-Gardist's MFA: The Avant-Garde's Rhetorical Opposition to MFAs, Pt. II
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleA Brief History of the Creative Writing MFA (Pt. I)
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleA Brief History of the Creative Writing MFA (Pt. II)
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleA Brief History of the Creative Writing MFA (Pt. III)
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleThe Silliman Paradox
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleThere Is No Project Afoot to Rehabilitate the MFA: The Death of the Academy...
{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to chronicle that process for myself and, if any others are...
View ArticleA Partial Index of Books Received and Considered
Below is a partial list of books received and considered in 2012. Books reviewed in The Huffington Post were selected from either this list or a personal library of more than 1,000 contemporary poetry...
View ArticleThere's a War On in American Poetry
There Has Been for 125 Years; the Combatants Aren't Who You'd Suspect; Is a Peace Treaty Possible?[NB: In this pre-prelims essay/note-taking exercise, I hypothesize about a 125-year-long battle between...
View ArticleThere's a War On in American Poetry (Part II): Were the New Critics the...
The Data Suggest We're on the Cusp of the Biggest-Ever MFA Boom{This summer I'm reading for my Literary Studies doctoral program's preliminary exams. I'm using my blog as a sort of reading journal to...
View ArticleThe Disintegrating Quality of Avant-Garde Discourse (Pt. I)
I have "Part IV" of the "There's a War On" series almost ready, but I was distracted today by a conversation now happening amongst some European (and possibly Canadian) avant-gardists regarding the...
View ArticleThe Disintegrating Quality of Avant-Garde Discourse (Pt. II)
[NB: Read Part I of this essay here].In this essay, Jake Berry uses two terms coined by Bob Grumman in the 1980s, "otherstream" and "knownstream." Grumman himself defined the terms as follows in March...
View ArticleA Response to Perloff's Response to Yankelevich's Response to Perloff's...
Obsession With "the Academy," Prizes, and the General Public Is Just Killing Literary Criticism of Contemporary American PoetryNoted academic Marjorie Perloff wrote this. Then Matvei Yankelevich, a...
View ArticleA Poetics
Marjorie Perloff just asked me on Facebook what makes texts she considers merely "lineated prose" eligible for the category of "poetry." She proposes "sound" as the singular marker of a "poem." As this...
View ArticleOn the Power of Positive Poetry-Reviewing (Part I)
{ADDENDUM: In the comments section below this post, I address some of the confusion this post has caused. The most important items are these: First, every review bears the responsibility of telling you...
View ArticleThere's a War On in American Poetry (Part III) [Aborted]
More than a week ago I wrote (but never posted) Part III of this essay series, an entry which was largely focused on how my Tolkien-inspired "Battle of the Four Armies" trope was self-consciously...
View ArticleOn the Power of Positive Poetry-Reviewing (Part II)
[Find Part I here].It was wrong of me not to put Part I of this essay in perspective and in context. It was partly because I knew some of the context but had not thought about it in some time, as the...
View Article100 Ways Poetry Is In Your Life
I was out with a friend recently and he disclosed something troubling. He said that, as to poetry, he'd come to a point in his life in which he just couldn't see the purpose of it anymore. Of poems...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....