An Apologia for Creative Writing

Abstract

little over a dozen years ago Tess Gallagher began a column for American Review with ostensible lament, There so few credible attacks on state of contemporary American poetry that when one discovers a voice on horizon, one really hopes for an invigorating call to battle (184). She was responding to James Atlas's article in New Republic entitled Poetry Cornered, in which he complains about proliferation of poets and poetry, for which he blames universities: the awarding of master's degrees in fine arts, poetry majors for undergraduates: a whole academic apparatus designed to promote successive waves of poets whose accomplishments and knowledge of poetry often astonishingly primitive (10). Gallagher did not find Atlas's attack to be credible, but in last dozen years attacks, whether credible or not, have certainly provided company for Atlas's lonely voice. August Kleinzahler's Jeremiad in May 1992 issue of Harper's Magazine is only most recent complaint over poetry's decay, in which plaintiff conflates a perceived decline in quality of contemporary poetry with spread of creative writing programs, presumably at both undergraduate and graduate level. Rambo V and chickens pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, Kleinzahler asserts, are closely related to Waldenbooks and Iowa Workshop (35). One senses that apparent academicization or institutionalization of poetry might be responsible for a variety of social ills, ranging from steroids to Reagan's proclivity for reading Tom Clancy. sweeping nature of Kleinzahler's suit harkens back to Ezra Pound's warning almost sixty years ago: If a nation's literature declines, nation atrophies and decays (32). The fact is,