As August comes to a close, I'm inaugurating my blog. It's less than six weeks before the publication date for MATRIMONY, and I'm very busy with preparations for that, but the school year is also impending--in fact, it has already begun at Brooklyn College's MFA program and is about to begin at Sarah Lawrence's MFA program, the two places where I teach--and I have to admit that I'm getting my usual feeling of looking forward to a new class, which I know a lot of people will think is crazy, but it's what happens to me every August. I've been thinking a lot about the teaching of writing, in part because I recently wrote an essay called "In Defense of the MFA," which will appear in the November/December issue of Poets and Writers.
I won't rehash the whole argument here, but what I take on in the essay is the argument, so common I lose track of how often it's been said to me, that writing can't be taught. It's usually articulated in the form of a question--"Do you really think writing can be taught?"--which is a strange thing to say to someone who teaches writing, because it supposes that I might not think it can be taught and that I'm simply pulling a fast one. Of course writing can be taught. It's done every day. I've been taught and I've taught others. I'm not saying you can teach anyone to be Fitzgerald, but you can't teach anyone to be be Mozart either, and yet no one questions the value of piano lessons. In fact, of all the arts, the teaching of writing is met with more skepticism than the teaching of anything else. Why is that? I hazard a few guesses in the essay, and then I go on to outline exactly what does get taught in a writing workshop--at least in my writing workshops. Anyway, for the full argument, read Poets and Writers come November.
