January 30th, 2012 / 12:16 pm
Vicarious MFA

Three ways to get a free poetry MFA

1. THE DICKINSON

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instructions:
* Never leave the house.

The downsides:
* Psychic fracture (this could happen at Cornell too)
* Your boo marries your brother (this could happen at Cornell too)

The upsides:
* Hot letters
* Yellow ribbon

2. THE WHITMAN

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instructions:
* Read those classics
* Work as journalist (or litblogger)
* Have cool and talented friends
* Self-publish

The downsides:
* Vested interest in defending self-publishing on litblogs
* People all up in your business (this could happen at Iowa too)
* Dealing with Thoreau’s bullshit

The upsides:
* There’s no cure like travel
* Sex (this could happen at Iowa too)

3. MY METHOD

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instructions:
* Work at a company, factory, or farm that provides tuition reimbursement
* Attend a city university or public college that only charges ~1,000 per class (at my city university I’ve studied with Marilyn Hacker twice, Elaine Equi thrice, Suzanne Gardinier, David Groff, among others)
* Only take the number of classes per semester that your tuition reimbursement covers (in my case, one)
* Graduate in ~10 years.

The downsides:
* You never form a poetry clique
* You still have to live in “the real world”
* You’ll probably never be a professor

The upsides:
* You never form a poetry clique
* You still have to live in “the real world”
* You’ll probably never be a professor

12 Comments

  1. Three ways to get a free poetry MFA | HTMLGIANT | Poetry

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  2. Anonymous

      haha, this is great! 

  3. Ryan Sanford Smith

      Seriously <3 those upsides. Two MFA years can easily feel like ~10, so I'm down with this.

  4. ohnovikings

      Cosigned by a CCNY MFA poetry student. 

  5. Laura Carter

      I love your plan! It took me 6 years because my TA was kind of heavy teaching. And academic writing can be a bubble, yes. So good choice.

  6. Melissa Broder

      This is a really swank comment room.

      Here’s the imagistic equiv of this comment room
      http://bit.ly/AtN4VN

  7. deadgod

      Meat Loaf wrote a book called Light My Fire?  Cool.

      (That soap monkey wants its Micky Dolenz back.)

  8. Craig Ronald Marchinkoski

      i worked construction to pay for mine. the lumberjack look was still considered avant-garde at the time at the little liberal new england universities. but i had to quit my program when the look went ubiquitous. waiting for it to cycle around again. but it might be too late. i may never finish. i may have to be ok with that.

      from the list, the whitman seems the most appealing. but i’m still holding the rimbaud/cheever to be the supreme choice.enjoy

  9. deadgod

      Join ‘us’ on the . . . wha hell, you might already be on The Tristam Shandy plan, “Parturition For Now–For As Long As It’s Now”.

  10. BppOperator

      Read: because my TA was kind of heavy teaching

      As: because my TA was kind of heavy breathing.

      = perverse assumptions.

  11. Anonymous

      pee my panst

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