The Counter Rant

I’ve been fascinated recently by Dan Barden’s workshop rant in Poets & Writers. He thinks the workshop is broken, mostly, if I can read it right, because it doesn’t a) let young writers know that no one needs to read their work, and b) it doesn’t have enough terror in it. It’s a kind of gruff, fisticuffs-filled, tough-love approach to the workshop. Fair enough. Some people might like that sort of thing. Great.

But I think he’s wrong pretty much everywhere, except where he says that the workshop should help writers change their understanding of and relationship to their writing. There’s a lot to tackle, so I’m just going to hit some high points.

He’s a big one for desire and conflict, but I’m not sure what it means to write something that someone needs to read. Accounting reports? National defense white pages? But need to read short stories or poems? Hell, people don’t really need to read anything, an issue that has the NEA wringing its hands again. So while he denigrates the verb “to want,” it’s the one that applies to creative writing; we hope to make something that someone wants to read. I realize that I’m hashing out semantics, but I think they’re important. On the other hand, if what he’s trying to say is that students need to understand the rhetorical context within which they’re working—that they need to understand that an audience isn’t built into anything they write—, then I’m with him.

I’m not sure what he means by terror. And he doesn’t offer any practical advice, or theoretical framework—it is a rant, after all—, but it leaves the topic hanging. Being scared shitless seems to work for him, he suggests. I’m not sure it works for many others. Or anybody. And I’m not sure he’s not lying to us.

So, the best question is: what IS the point of the workshop? If the point is to manufacture professional writers who want to become masochists who live in fear, then I think that Barden’s on to something. But how many undergraduates really believe that they’re going to be writers? For my school, the workshop is a writing credit, so we get a lot of engineers, history majors, exercise physiology majors—whatever. Are they best served by terror?

The workshop, even at the graduate level, is almost entirely populated by people who will never go on to publish.

We might say, they don’t need the class. They don’t need our work.

But like a magazine at a doctor’s office, they’ve picked it up anyway. If we’re lucky, they might go out and by another magazine. They’ll go out the door of our class understanding what’s at stake in writing. They’ll understand that it’s hard work, and they’ll appreciate a story, a book, a poem, a play, a movie that much more. And maybe they won’t fear literature.

Does this mean that I don’t ask my students to work in my class? That I let any damn thing they say to be acceptable? Not at all. And though I never have any discussions about why my degree makes me the chest-beating master of my class, my students respect my expertise. Of course, we let a lot of other masters into the class: my students do a lot of research and reading. We talk about how other texts work, and then we take that back to the workshop. And we make sure to use the strategies and vocabulary from our craft and literature discussions. Do they write a whole shit-ton of poetry? Maybe not so much. But they walk away with a sense that this work of writing is hard. It’s hard to do, hard to think about, hard to judge. But engaging with it is profoundly satisfying.

(And after this, I'll try to post a poem or two...but I've been spending so much energy on the comps and the various presentations that I haven't had a chance to do much poetizing. It is to make one sigh dramatically and call for more coffee.)

Comments

[Laura M]

Nice rebuttal. Good thinking.

[Crafty Green Poet]

terror never works for me, I much prefer your way of thinking...

btw I've given your blog an award, come over to my blog to find out more...