Welcome and thanks for stopping by.

It’s quite interesting looking through the traffic data for this site to see where people are coming from and what you are all reading. While I’m not surprised by what gets read and what does not, I am surprised by where the traffic comes from, literally all around the world. Certainly the articles on art and technlogy are of interest to a great many people, but so is my little manifesto on teaching creative writing. And why so many readers from South America?

I’ve not posted much new work because I am doing a ton of research for the novel, which I am trying to finish by the end of the year. And alas, summer is here, so there are many things to distract me. But when you live in the snowbelt, you treasure each day over 60 degrees and it gets harder to remain chained to the laptop.

Stay well,

p.

…To fear and love,
To love as prime and chief, for there fear ends,
Be this ascribed; 
  –William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” Book 14, 162-165.

First, you get up in the morning, and although they tell you not to drink coffee, you do it anyway, because you know it will be the best moment of the day. Try to do few things around the house before they come to pick you up and bring you to the doctor’s office. Later on you will just want to nap and watch TV until morning, probably horse racing, because it’s the only thing on late that you don’t already know the outcome of.

Don’t forget some fruit, the poetry book, and the headphones, because you’ll want to tune out the other people in the room, the cancer clutch. The center is nothing fancy, not a suite of private treatment rooms like at some centers, just a large room with some office dividers acting as a lame attempt to screen you off from each other. The reclining medical chairs are dated, vinyl and not particularly ergonomic. Considering what it costs for this stuff, $7500 each visit, you’ll wonder why they can’t splurge on nicer lounges and maybe some privacy curtains.

For the next five hours you will be hooked up to an IV drip containing the medicines that are supposed to save your life, if they don’t kill you first. Don’t worry, you’ll fall asleep through part of it, and by judiciously using your headphones and your book, you will be able to ignore the cancer clutch. There are two kinds of patients in the room, those who talk and those who don’t.  You make it very clear early-on that you are a non-talker, aside from the occasional pleasantries, of course. It’s not that you’re antisocial; it’s just that most of the clutch, seeing their own life fade before them, feel compelled to talk about their disease at great length. They are old and ready to die; you are young and not ready. Don’t fall victim to that complacency. Fight the disease quietly, alone.

The nurses are compassionate and will ask many questions: How are you feeling? Have you eaten today? First, they do a finger-stick blood test to make sure your cell counts are OK before they start poisoning you, unleashing cell killers that don’t differentiate good cells from the cancer cells; the drugs attack with equanimity. Next, they’ll put a long flexible needle into a vein on the top of your hand. It’s best not to watch this; if the nurse is good, you won’t even feel it. Take the blanket the nurses offer you because the liquids are at room temperature and they will chill you off from the inside, something you’ll think must feel like the onset of death. Your cocktail drip-they call it that-consists of four ingredients, starting with Compazine, to prevent stomach upset, and Benadryl, to ward off allergic reactions to the chemo drugs. If you’re lucky, the Benadryl will put you right to sleep for an hour. Then they’ll follow with the big guns: Taxol, a lung cancer drug made from the Yew Tree of all things, and Carboplatin, a basic do-all cancer drug that will burn slightly on the way in.  If it gets too hot, call the nurse, and they’ll rinse the vein with some saline.

When you wake up, eat some fruit and read Wordsworth for a little while, then close your eyes and try to nap again. Follow your breaths, like in meditation, until you begin to visualize Wordsworth’s landscape–the fells, slate-capped and oddly treeless, dotted with sheep, quilted by stone walls that stretch for miles. When the discomfort starts, promise yourself that if you get better, you will go back there as originally scheduled, visit your mates, get your families together and go walking. Convince yourself that planning this trip while healing will cure your melancholy, much the same way that living there cured Wordsworth’s. At the church in Grasmere, above his grave, Wordsworth planted Yew trees. You find this ironic.

***************

In the churchyard at Grasmere, among the Yew Trees and just off the path that bears thousands of summer tourists through the streets of the small village, lies the tomb of English poet William Wordsworth. Standing there under the trees, trying to make out the writings on the stones faded from 150 years of English precipitation, it occurs to me that it would be OK to die here. There are few, if any, similarities between William and me. I am neither a scholar of romantic poetry nor a poet, but this small piece of the world has held special significance for me for over twenty years. What began as a random stop on a semester abroad has become a place of almost tantric focus, a mental image to tranquilize the fear of my impending death. Now in remission, I have come here to pay homage, as the bard himself once did:

At sight of this seclusion, he forgot
His haste, for hasty had his footsteps been
As boyish his pursuits; and sighing said,
“What happy fortune were it here to live!
And, if a thought of dying, if a thought
Of mortal separation, could intrude
With paradise before him, here to die!” 
  –William Wordsworth, “Home at Grasmere,” 8-14.

Young William first saw the beauty of this place as a child. Much of the region’s popularity derives from the treatment of this landscape in Wordsworth’s poetry. Twenty years ago, two dear friends, my roommates at England’s University of Worcester, borrowed a car and took me here for a long weekend of camping and walking, which is what most people come here to do. My roommates had heard that all Americans want to visit the Lake District, like Buckingham Palace, but the truth is, I had never heard of it. Wordsworth was a walking poet, and he composed most of his work while walking the fells and vales of this most beautiful of landscapes. As a student, I was just barely acquainted with his poetry, but my amazement at the place made me explore his verse and come to enjoy it even more. In this landscape, and in the language William uses to evoke it, there exists an indescribable power to sooth and reassure, as if to say, within nature lies the capacity to survive.

Throughout the months of cancer treatment, I used Wordsworth and Grasmere as my crutch. At my times of deepest anxiety, when most would focus on their families for comfort, I could not bear to conjure them, the possibility of losing them as real as the possibility of survival. But I could recall the incredible sense of peace I felt in these hills, the completeness. Trying to avert long nights of anxious dreaming, I often pictured myself walking here, healed, restored. That college trip to Europe changed my life, and the brief time I spent walking these hills and pastures were more transformative for me than I ever could have known. For twenty years I dreamt of coming back here, bringing my family and gathering my roommates and their families for a week together in these hills. We had begun to make plans before the tumor was discovered. The reunion was postponed so I could receive treatment. Fate intervened, and on the other side of the battle for my life, this trip shined like a trophy. All I could do was follow.

Such pleasure now is mine, albeit forced,
Herein less happy than the Traveller,
To cast from time to time a painful look
Upon unwelcome things which unawares
Reveal themselves, not therefore is my heart
Depressed, nor does it fear what is to come;
But confident, enriched at every glance,
The more I see the more delight my mind
Receives, or by reflection can create:
Truth justifies herself, and as she dwells
With Hope, who would not follow where she leads?
  –William Wordsworth, “Home at Grasmere,” 491-501.

Now in the churchyard the sky threatens showers and we start the day late, delayed by trying to get six adults and nine children under fourteen dressed and fed, so that the day’s excursions could begin. My roommates and their families headed off in another direction, leaving us to take this one journey alone. Though we planned the walk for months, arriving at the parking lot and preparing to begin stirs my anxiety. What if it rains? What if we get halfway and I can’t make it any more? Surely the kids are not as interested in this as me. They are enjoying the trip, but I think they look upon this walk with their parents as a bit of an annoyance, like having to go to church. Still, they know this walk is important to me and are supportive even though they cannot understand the deeper significance of it all. I’m not sure I understand it myself. They were so strong and grown-up through my illness that I feel almost ungrateful for making them take this trek.

In another bit of irony, this walk is called the Coffin Path. The brochure tells us to begin at Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth moved at the age of 30 to live in relative obscurity with his sister Dorothy and to compose his life’s work, “The Prelude,” a long poem discussing the growth of a poet’s mind. The walking path is circular, beginning at Dove Cottage where it climbs to a level of 1800 feet at a moderate incline, running parallel to Grasmere Lake and Rydal Water until it reaches Wordsworth’s later home at Rydal Mount, some three miles away. We are then to descend to the water’s edge and begin a slow climb along the other side of the lakes, returning to Grasmere. Total distance: 5.4 miles. The tourist information center lists the difficulty as easy; suitable for children and the elderly, it says. Allow three hours.

When William moved into Dove Cottage in December 1799, his first book of poems had just been released to a mix of controversy and acclaim. For the next 50 years, he walked these hills and immortalized this landscape and its inhabitants. The Cottage was once a small inn for passing traders, and William and Dorothy lived here simply, if not comfortably. The home has all the charm of an old cottage: whitewashed walls, plated glass windows, small sparsely furnished rooms, and an unpretentious English garden planted with common domestic plants like London Pride, Orchisis, Celadine, Laurels, and Thyme. While living here, the Wordsworths entertained other poets of the period, most notably Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom Wordsworth would have a deep personal friendship spanning many years. The cottage, and the small group of buildings that surround it, have all been purchased by the Wordsworth Trust and are well maintained. There is a new museum as well, which holds many artifacts from the Wordsworths, as well as illustrations of Lakeland life in the early 19^th century. The food in the nearby café is remarkably good; we eat heartily and watch the skies threaten more showers. My wife and kids seem to be waiting for me to decide when to leave. I’m having second thoughts again. My wife takes my hand. “You came this far,” she says. She’s right, of course, and strong.

The road begins its ascent from the valley just beyond Dove Cottage, and at first, though it is paved and slightly steep, I feel encouraged. Part way up I feel the strain in my legs and chest. I hoped the incline was more gradual, but then again, perhaps it is better to put my lungs to the test now. I lost half my left lung to the cancer, removed surgically in a four- hour operation in New York City just over a year before this trip. I was not in the greatest shape before the surgery, and certainly had not prepared in any way for this walk, so I’m not sure how my breathing will be and if I will be able to complete the walk before the dark of night or chill of rain. As I climb, stepping smaller and smaller, I sometimes turn around and walk backward to shift the pain to other muscles in my legs. I later learned that Wordsworth sometimes did this as well. I breathe steady and rhythmically, like a determined marathon runner, thinking at each step that if my kids can do this, then so can I. At first the paved road is easy on the ankles, but as we reach a leveling out point, the pavement veers left and the trail, pointed right by a wooden signpost that says “Path to Rydal,” becomes damp soil littered with stones. The first ascent complete, I am out of breath but still breathing.

***************

You’ll observe in the hospital that no one wants to be the one to deliver the diagnosis. The attending doctors actually flip coins to decide. They’ll kind of skirt the issue and avert their eyes when speaking to you, because they can’t hide their sympathy for what you are about to go through, for the degree to which your life is about to change. What they will eventually say is “There is a large mass, seven centimeters, at the top of your lung. We have to do more tests. It could just be pneumonia.” You’re smart, though-you know it’s lung cancer-but you’ll stay strong for the wife who is sobbing next to you. You’ll say something pathetically brave, like “It’s OK. We can beat this.” Bravo.

From this point on, under no circumstances are you to read information on the five-year survival rates, which hover around ten percent. Lung cancer victims are mostly old people; you are young and can handle everything the medical community can throw at you. You will get sick, lose your hair, grow more exhausted and disheartened than you ever thought possible. Radiation treatments will burn your esophagus, and chemotherapy will make you vomit. You won’t shit for days. After that, if you’re lucky, you will only lose half your lung, rather than the whole one. You have two, but every piece counts. You will survive this though. Even when you don’t believe this, you must believe this.

***************

Walking now, I am starting to heat up. My teenage son has taken to glancing at me, looking to catch me if I faint. He coaches me the way I coached him in Little League. “Move your arms more,” he says. “Lift your knees.” I remove my coat and stuff it in my backpack. It’s a black Swiss Army bag, not one of the shiny high-tech looking ones, but a more basic daypack that actually zips on to the outside of the larger, more high-tech bag that carried my belongings here. I haven’t overpacked: there’s my lined windbreaker and a compact Totes umbrella; some sunglasses, a small LED penlight and a set of binoculars; basic first aid items, of course, Barbie band-aids, Advil, and cortisone cream. Hidden deep-down, a few Vicodin. Water.

On the straps, I’ve attached pins that promote my alma mater, favorite sports teams, and other quirks about me–an American flag, a drum. The one that says “Cancer Sucks” I left at home. I’ve also brought Wordsworth’s selected poems (the Dove Cottage edition), a topographic map of the Lakes, and the brochure containing the directions for the hike.

On my back, I carry the joy of having survived, of being in a place with such enormous spiritual power, of connecting the past to the present with the ones I love most in the world. Before me lie the hills and valleys on which I relied for support when my soul was at its most afraid. From such fear, such joy! For all cancer survivors, my continued existence, like my ability to complete this trek, is tenuous, and so I also carry the heaviest item of all…the fear of failure. But I keep walking anyway.

In my head I can still hear the lines of poetry, the iambic pentameter that now seems so quaint to our ears. Wordsworth’s language became my lexicon of hope, and even though I often read it halfheartedly, only skimming the text without taking from it any real meaning, it gave me great comfort just to have it there, like a Bible, as if reading it could bring my mind and spirit back to this place in which I am now walking, as if I could calm myself enough to do some good.

The trail winds gently up and through a forest between stone walls that must have taken years to build. In some areas sheep graze in between the trees and ferns. In other areas, small rivulets of clear mountain water flow down to the lakes, which have now disappeared from view. I stop at some of these rivulets to baptize myself in its coolness. My daughter laughs when I shake my head at her, like a wet dog. Eventually we come to a small clearing where the lakes can be seen once again. According to my watch I assume we must be almost there, but according to the view, we are not yet one-fourth of the way to our stopping point at Rydal. I have to stop more often to catch my breath, pretending that I need water when what I really need is air.

The Coffin Path gets its name from its important role in connecting the once-churchless village of Rydal to the church at Grasmere. When a Rydal resident died, mourners and pallbearers would have to carry the deceased in his leaden box over this three-mile route. Scattered along it are stone seats, where they could place the coffin and rest their shoulders. The one before me is a simple slab of limestone, nothing noted on or near it, but well worn from years of service. Wordsworth walked this path often, composing poetry aloud as he wandered. Nab Scar, a foreboding piece of rock where falcons and buzzards nest, looms high above us. Darker clouds roll in, the same way they did when Wordsworth wrote his poem about this eerie spot in 1808:

A humble walk
Here is my body doomed to tread, this path,
A little hoary line and faintly traced,
Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd’s foot
Or of his flock?–joint vestige of them both.
  –William Wordsworth, “To a Cloud,” 54-58.

The rain begins to fall at last, but we are protected by the overhanging forests through which we climb. The sounds of running water grow as the rains increase and then subside, and moments later the sun breaks out, raising the humidity and making it even harder to breathe. We pass a small ruined cabin, gated off, in which Wordsworth composed poetry in his later years, and from which passers-by often heard him talking to himself. Just beyond we can see the main house, Rydal Mount, where William moved in 1813 having outgrown the more meager spaces of Dove Cottage. He had a wife now, and children. This home and the lush landscaped gardens that surround it are quite different and reflect Wordsworth’s new status in his career. I am eager to see inside, but I am more thrilled because I know there is another tea shop where we can revive ourselves and take in the surroundings. After two grueling hours, we are halfway home.

Rydal vastly differs from Dove Cottage, featuring acres of formally landscaped gardens designed by Wordsworth himself. In contrast to the other gardens simplicity, these include plants quite exotic for the time, large plantings like Japanese Maple, Rhododendron, and Italian Cypress. Though partially still in use by his descendants, most of the home is open as a museum, featuring copies of letters and artworks that belonged to William. We are the only visitors, and the woman who walks us through the house is excited to see us. “Sit a spell,” she tells me. “You look half dead.”

Though William composed most of his best poetry in Grasmere, this new home bespeaks of reinvention and revision. At Rydal, while continuing to write new poems, he also spent vast amounts of time revising “The Prelude,” the final revision of which would not appear until after his death in 1850, 45 years after he completed his earlier draft. His life’s work was truly that-life-long.

While browsing the gift shop, the clerk asks if we’ve taken the trail here. I joke about being exhausted and yet only half finished. He says, “If you’re really knackered, there is a bus that runs from the bottom of this hill right back to Grasmere every 30 minutes.” My wife looks at me, relieved that, with both houses now visited, we can enjoy a more sedentary afternoon. But I’m not so sure.

Over tea we discuss the options. The day has warmed but I feel restored, invincible, and I want to keep going. None of the brochures mentioned a bus return, so I always assumed the only way to get back would be to complete the walk. Taking the bus back now would be anticlimactic, though my legs, lungs and children would thank me. I pretend that I am debating the issue as we descended from Rydal Mount, past the waterfalls on which Wordsworth based one poem, and past the Rydal Church, where in his late 70s, he and his wife bent on hands and knees and planted thousands of daffodils to honor the memory of their daughter Catherine, who died at the age of 42, nearly my age now. It being August, the daffodils are not in bloom, but we decide to walk through the cemetery gate and see the inside of the church.

Alone in the cool sanctuary I listen to the slow scrape of a branch against a stained glass window. My daughter signs the visitors’ book as I sit in the first pew, right where Wordsworth himself sat (and allegedly slept) through many services in his later years. Here I feel the connection to William more strongly than ever. On this very bench, might he have prayed for strength? For health? Frail and 70, his planting daffodils seems more effort than my finishing the last three miles of this pilgrimage. This church was not completed until eleven years after Wordsworth moved to Rydal, so until then, he continued to attend regular services in Grasmere by walking the exact path we had just completed, back and forth on a Sunday morning. One of the things you learn when facing cancer is to do nothing half-way. The kids, bless them, say nothing, as we walk right past the bus stop at the bottom of the hill and begin the second half of our journey.

***************

You’ll feel surprisingly good when you come out of surgery. You won’t remember anything, just saying to yourself, “Done.” Gradually you will begin to assess your situation, location, sensations. Before you get too far along, the nurse sees you are awake and comes to your side. “Are you comfortable?” she’ll say. Yes. “Do you know your birthday?” Yes, April 22. She’ll tell you everything went fine and will leave to get your wife. Your wife will look more beautiful than ever before.

Try to enjoy this moment of self-congratulation. You survived major surgery, feel pretty good, and with any luck, are now completely free from the tumor and any cancer cells waiting in the minefields of your chest. The way you feel at that moment will be the best you feel for days, anesthesia still in force, relieved, grateful. The months ahead will hold rehabilitation, discomfort, drug addiction, depression, anxiety, hate, pain, guilt. This will be tempered by the support of friends you have never met, the prayers and offerings of dear ones, and the joy of seeing your children waiting on the porch as you pull up the drive, their tears finally flowing. You realize that when you last left them, they were not sure they would see you alive again. It amazes you that, somehow, you never saw them cry.

***************

The walk on the west side of the valley is every bit as beautiful as the east, but instead of being shaded and cooled by the canopy, it is wide open, the forest having long ago been cleared to make room for pasture land. With no shade and the clouds fleeing, beautiful sunshine warms the earth but continues to increase the humidity. This path’s long, slow climb goes on for ages, and the sign posts and the directions in the brochure do not always agree. Time grows late. We stop for a drink and realize that we have left our last full bottle of water in the tea shop at Rydal. We have just a few ounces left in the bottle in my backpack. Growing weary, there remains much more walking to be done. Tempers, while still good, are fragile. Five hours have passed, and we expected to be finished by now.

After the surgery, days of laying about in the hospital, the return home, and subsequent follow up visits, we had time to celebrate the surgeon’s declaration that all the cancer had been removed. Happy to be finished, and comfortably numb from the Vicodin, the news that I would have another four doses of full-strength chemotherapy, just to kill any rogue cells that might be circulating in my body, did not sit well. Like this walk, I just wanted my illness to be completely over. In hindsight, it seems as if this entire episode of my life-this battle temporarily won, this disease tenuously in remission-is a sign of some kind, sent by something greater than life, with a message equal to the severity of the continuing challenge before me. It is never completely over. We keep walking.

Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;
Whether her fearless visitings, or those
That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
Opening the peaceful clouds; or she would use
Severer interventions, ministry
More palpable, as best might suit her aim.
  –William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” Book 1, 351-356.

I suddenly realize we took a wrong turn at the last signpost, and have started to ascend the mountain again. Clearly it will end at the same road, but rather than hugging the shorelines of the lake, our path meanders across slightly wooded pasture. We learned later that the trail had been altered to improve drainage and that new brochures had not yet been printed. I start to get tense. My whole body aches. I long ago stopped hearing William’s encouraging words in my ear. I just want to get to the pub at the end, and from there, return to our rented cottage where there is, of all things, a large Jacuzzi tub.

The brochure said the walk would take about three hours, and now, approaching the seven-hour mark we finally see the village in the distance, almost touchable. I am not thinking about William or about poetry anymore, as up ahead of me I watch my 10-year old daughter set the pace. She has complained a little, but is now excited about the nearing of the village and getting to rejoin her new friends at the cottage. It occurs to me that for each of my steps, she takes two. That’s 30,000 steps over the course of this walk to my 15,000. She has not reached for the Barbie band-aids, nor I for the Vicodin. Discomfort is temporary, and relative. It occurs to me that this is yet another transformational moment in Grasmere, a reminder that there is more to life even than death, if you simply slow down and take the time to see it.

***************

For awhile you will dislike being called a survivor. It seems so trite and almost gloats in the faces of those who were not as fortunate as you. Though it may sound strange, you are not grateful for your second chance at life, delighting only superficially in your past, and dwelling not on your fragile future. You are grateful solely for this very moment, to just exist, right now, because like discomfort, pleasure, too, is temporary and relative.

You will no longer waste a single minute. You will do only what you care most deeply about. You’ll focus your interests and take on less responsibility, not as a sign of surrender, but as a commitment to live life to its fullest, which entails giving it everything you have. You will never do anything halfway.

***************

Leaving the path at last we follow the paved roadway into the village of Grasmere. The narrow road, bordered on both sides by ragged stone walk barely fits two cars passing side by side, so we walk single file, as close to one wall as possible. I lead, my senses on heightened alert for speeding vehicles, the kids follow close behind me, and my wife brings up the rear, keeping us in line. We have come full circle in more ways than one– completing the circuitous path, returning after 20 years to this land of special significance, and coming once again to this plot of Yew Trees, which saved my life literally and figuratively. But at the end of every circle lies its beginning, and I remember that the battle is never really over, but a new one begins. But my soldiers and I, with our poet lieutenant, are ready.

          And hairnet says, Boy
I been workin here since 62, seen em all too,
the Duke and the stoned smiles of Miles
and Coltrane, Rollins and Mingus ah um,
even that phallus Marsalis,
takin jazz on his back like Atlas and shit.
Been fixin their drinks and lightin their smokes,
rollin em too, when that was the fashion, and taking the cash in
but boy I aint never seen someone so young and
so white late at night
riskin his dick for this two-bit quartet shit
Splain it to me Gilligan…

       And I say, Mam,
maybe the lights too bright, your hairnet too tight, right?
but white aint no color and jazz
is a state of mind.
See I come for the drums hon, to hear how they steer it,
to savor the swish of the cymbals, the crack of the snare there
as it sets up the sax growl and the horn’s howl, grrrrrrrrrr bop!
and shit,
if that don’t make me forgit
the color of the skin I’m in,
or yours for that matter,
and focus instead on the sounds in my head,
red, like your lipstick, lover,
or yellow, like the hat on that cat over there,
but never black or white,
not even grey, because hey,
for jazz to survive until 2005,
we got to love all hues,
and the only color jazz knows
          is the blues.

The great divide: creative writing pedagogy now

The numbers certainly are impressive. Hundreds of graduate programs in creative writing in the United States are graduating thousands of students each year, credentialing each as a certified producer of literature for an audience that, depending on who you ask, is either blossoming or moribund.  To receive this certification, students are investing one to three years of their lives and forking over anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 for an experience that promises nothing in the way of employment, fame, or financial remuneration. Other terminal, professional degrees like the MBA, MSW or MAT, promise a quick and nearly certain return on investment, while the MFA is, for most writers, an experience one pays for, rather than an investment one makes. Despite the slim odds of obtaining a teaching position, and the even slimmer odds of publication, for the thousands of graduate students who enter such programs each year, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Such rapid and consistent growth has posed interesting challenges to creative writing programs, which must now come to terms with their storied histories, challenges to their identity, and the skepticism that comes from the publishing industry, university English departments, and even from one’s parents and friends. Nearly one hundred years after the birth of the workshop, the old question of, “Can you really teach creative writing?” is apparently still unanswered to the satisfaction of many.

And if criticism from outside isn’t enough, there are skirmishes brewing within the creative writing empire as well. Differences in pedagogy, focus, and structure abound, and while change is generally a good thing, it must appear to recent alumni of MFA programs that their elite degree is close to becoming as worthless as the paper it is printed on. Witness the current bar-raising by university English departments, who, after having accepted thousands of dollars from MFA students for a “terminal” degree, are now offering PhD programs in the field that will render the MFA useful for writers but useless for teaching. This wouldn’t be too bad were it not that teaching, which has for so long become a means of economic support to supplement the meager income most writers receive from their creative pursuits, is what enables many writers to keep writing in the first place.

There is a great divide in creative writing. Creative writing programs were born in a time when writers were looking for a fast track to publication, the workshop model serving as a proving ground where only the strong survived. The continued existence of this model, despite the cultural and pedagogical changes of the last fifty years, still echoes the harsh realities of publishing, where far more submissions are received than can be printed, and only the “strong” make it to print. But this model that was once based firmly in “tough love” has softened as the interest in creative writing programs has broadened and its participants come to it with vastly different goals and expectations. Some might say that the increase in programs has created a shallow talent pool, where students receive only feel-good feedback about their work that does nothing to improve its quality. Others would counter that quality is completely relative and thus should not be measured as a goal.

This great divide, rooted in history and widened by growth, is creating an identity crisis in the profession that leaves prospective teachers to wonder who they are teaching and why. Are these programs designed to turn out highly polished writers capable of producing literature that will stand, if not the test of time, then at least rise above the slush pile; or, are they designed to help individuals connect with their inner self, to foster a nurturing environment where each writer can find his own voice regardless of whether or not it will be of interest to an audience? Are these programs designed to produce writers who are capable of writing and also of teaching others how to write; or, are graduates being thrown into the classroom solely to meet burgeoning undergraduate demand, with no understanding of pedagogy or training in how to best teach the trade they have learned? Are these programs rooted in a mentor/apprentice relationship where students will learn from and model themselves on successful writers; or, are the teachers mainly shepherds who gather their flocks lovingly and move them along to the next pasture? One thing I have learned is that there are no real answers, only very provoking questions that we each need to confront in order to build an effective pedagogical practice. And if you’re wondering if all this negativity has snuffed out my desire to spend fifteen months and $13,770 to pursue this same worthless piece of paper, the answer is no. It has stoked it.

In addressing these issues, it is vital that we consider who is asking the questions; before a highly individual educational philosophy can be reached, it is important to determine the audiences for whom we are reaching it and the expectations embedded in their desire to practice creative writing. At the risk of oversimplifying, I think audiences for creative writing instruction can be divided into three groups: the public at-large (not seeking academic credit), undergraduate students (including those majoring in English or creative writing), and professional and graduate students. Each brings to the discussion a unique set of needs and expectations, and while there is much overlap, I think the desires and expectations within each group are sufficiently similar. Furthermore, I believe that within each audience are individuals who have no higher goals for their writing than to produce work solely for themselves. While their desires are certainly legitimate, and while they can certainly learn from whatever instruction and feedback they receive, I’m not sure it is the place of a writing pedagogy to address these intrapersonal pursuits. Writing is certainly good therapy, I use it myself, but if therapy is the only aim, then a pedagogy addressing that is best left to art therapists and others who can contribute a psychological point of view. For my purposes, I am designing a pedagogy that is tailored to those who wish to improve their writing with the aim of sharing it with others, whether via national publication, blog, or family scrapbook.

These days, writers who seek instruction or feedback with no ties to academe have plenty of opportunities. From non-credit, online workshops with facilitation to virtual writing communities, the avenues for writers to pursue have expanded hand-in-hand with the explosion in computer technology and the Internet. While some of these writers might be seeking basic instruction, I feel more of them are seeking audiences for their work in the form of peer feedback, which they are as willing to provide as they are to receive. Thus, their expectations tend to be for “down and dirty” criticism, using the workshop more as a test audience than a learning classroom.

The needs and expectation of undergraduates run across boundaries, from the engineering student who enjoys writing poetry to the creative writing major who has known they wanted to be a writer since elementary school. In this context it is important to have a program that clearly identifies the goals for each course along the way, perhaps even going so far as to create different sections of the same course for students with different expectations. The generalist should have a welcoming environment where they can learn and develop their work in a safe haven, free from the kind of hyper aggressive feedback that might develop, say, in a class of creative writing majors. This segregation would largely be determined by the school and the scope of the program. Creative writing majors, many of whom will likely be headed for an MFA program, need a pedagogy that addresses their needs with more complexity and exposes them to the very difficult and competitive environments that might exist in MFA programs, along with helping them to determine which kind of MFA program might be right for them.

Professionals and graduate students I have lumped together, despite what I feel to be slightly different expectations. I define professional students as those who are already writers (perhaps journalists, copywriters, or technical editors) who want to begin or develop a creative writing practice as a way to balance their other writing obligations. Also included in this group are writers who have no desire to teach at all, but who want the rigor of an studio-based, academic program to help build their portfolio of work and lead them further along the path to publication. This group is likely seeking a more skilled and demanding audience than they would find outside the classroom, and will certainly be looking for the benefits of having a big name program exposing them to big name teachers, visiting writers, and agents and editors.

I tend to define graduate students as seeking a teaching credential first and publication second. Some may have entered the MFA program because, while they love to write, they know first and foremost that teaching writing is a slightly more attainable goal, although with record numbers of students receiving the MFA each year, that is certainly changing. As a side note for the teaching part of this audience, a well-developed course in pedagogy is urgently needed, and currently lacking, in many programs, especially given that many of them will teach undergraduates as part of their MFA financial package. As Kelly Ritter notes in her study of teacher training, even in creative writing PhD programs, where the emphasis on teaching should be even more pronounced, only 4 of 25 institutions require a course in pedagogy or teaching of creative writing specifically, while 23 of 25 require courses in the teaching of composition (218). This clearly demonstrates that the department administration believes that learning how to teach composition is similar to teaching creative writing, which, in my view, is completely misguided.

Even within these three audiences, we have not accounted for variations in talent, the level of education in reading and writing that students bring to the program, and a host of other concerns that teachers need to consider as they develop appropriate pedagogies. In a field with audiences as diverse as these-and I struggle to find any academic field that competes with this level of diversity-developing a single, fixed pedagogy is impossible and irresponsible. Instead, I believe we should develop a core set of beliefs that are flexible enough to balance these competing and complimentary audiences and expectations.

Balancing the great divide: the Ten Commandments of teaching creative writing

So how are we to develop a pedagogy that satisfies our own sense of what is needed, as well as the expectations placed on us by so many different factors, such as the challenges of history and theory, and the diversity of audiences and expectations? I believe the answers lie in balance and flexibility. In my life, a strong sense of balance has been central to my personal development and professional growth. I have come to find that both intellectually and spiritually, taking the middle path and practicing moderation whenever possible are central to my success and survival. So it stands to reason that the most important concept in the development of my personal creative writing pedagogy is this notion of balance. Between theory and practice, between writing for self and writing for others, between vision and revision, between planning and improvisation, between freedom and restraint, between absolutes and relatives, between craft and criticism, between art and life, between leading and guiding, between pragmatism and dream, all must be taught and explored in a manner jointly determined by the goals of the group and the goals of the program. But with changing paradigms in the field, and such a diversity of audiences and expectations, flexibility in one’s beliefs is just as important. So while the original Ten Commandments were cast in stone, I prefer to etch these in sand, a nod towards impermanence and constant change.

I.            Thou shall teach both theory and practice

I find it impossible to fathom that writer and longtime teacher Madison Smartt Bell once said, “…for writers to get more involved with theoretical criticism [is] wrong” (Neubauer 11). The workshop, and creative writing programs in general, function as a sort of testing ground for new works, which by definition, means evaluating and critically examining those works along the line of the author’s intent. And while I realize that today’s contemporary critical theory as practiced by the rest of the English department is concerned with just the opposite-divorcing reading from writing altogether-there are certainly ways to meld it into our workshops, and we have a responsibility to do so.

At first glance, it may seem that teaching contemporary literary theory is completely incongruous with teaching creative writing, but as Jay Parini suggests, there are plenty of opportunities to use theory to open up new avenues and develop new voices, especially through the study of rhetoric, where “literary theory and creative writing should and can meet [to gain] knowledge of the most productive ways of ‘making’ language, of creating meaning and eliciting responses within the bounds of predictability” (130). In addition to the study of rhetoric, where writers and critics may have the most to gain from each other, I have personally found studies in poetics, prosody, linguistics, structuralism, post-structuralist narratology, and reader-response theory to be extremely interesting and useful in my work as a writer.

But beyond the usefulness of theory as applied to generating or evaluating work, we should teach our students theory simply on the grounds that if they ever expect to work in higher education, they will come face-to-face with it. In some cases, they will have to defend themselves from it, in others they may actually find themselves teaching it. Theory is an important component in discussing literature today, and it would be negligent of us to send prospective teachers into the classroom without an understanding of both sides of the theory debate. In fact, for English majors headed towards advanced study in literature, as opposed to creative writing, creative writing instructors may provide the only exposure to theory from a writer’s perspective that they ever encounter.

II.            Thou shall teach students to neither mistake, nor suppress, themselves for their audience

George Garrett, writer and esteemed teacher both at Hollins College and at the University of Virginia, believes “it’s not necessarily the chief purpose and function of a writing course to produce writers. [The goal] is to satisfy a need felt by these people” (Neubauer 114). While the marketing professional in me would agree, the writer in me would counter that at some point, the writer needs to sail on or jump ship, especially within the confines of a workshop or program in an academic setting.

In order not to silence the creative space in the classroom, we must give our students the complete freedom and flexibility to experiment and write about whatever interests them. Still, they must also come to understand that not everyone, perhaps not anyone, will share their interest in a particular topic or their presentation of a particular work. How then to balance the need for self-expression, with the idea that most writing, certainly the kind being produced in a advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, is designed to be read by somebody other than the writer himself. Inherent in this idea is the notion that as we evaluate writing in the workshop, we must continually ask, who are you writing for?

This pursuit of the writing life is a very solitary and personal journey, and most of the writing we do will be seen by our eyes only. But if we aspire to publication of any kind, we must keep in mind the idea of audience, not just the individual readers, but also the individual editors and publisher who are the gatekeepers to the reading public. It is thus important to maintain a balance between writing for ourselves and writing for others, and we must help the writer develop the instinct to know which writing to present at what time.

Most would agree that we need to create a space where students feel comfortable baring their naked aesthetic for all to see, but as Jane Smiley writes, students must also discover how to “become teachable, that is, to become receptive” (244). Within this paradox, we need to give students the freedom to create, but also enable them also to learn from the feedback than helps them to grow as writers.

Writing guru Natalie Goldberg says, “I don’t think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die” (xii). The challenge for us, as teachers, is to coax those stories out and to help the writer decide for herself where those stories might be best heard.

III.            Thou shall articulate the difference between vision and revision

The exercises and encouragement we provide for visioning (i.e. creating the initial draft or first thoughts) must be different from what we offer to those in the process of revision, (i.e. seeing again). Rules, guidelines and qualitative expectations will hinder the process that is needed to create new material and to get those wild thoughts down on paper for the first time. If, as Teresa Amabile’s studies suggest “increased productivity may be our most accessible means of engendering creativity,” then I believe we must provide encouragement that is measured in quantity not quality, and is concerned more with process than product (Sarbo 141).

I am a strong advocate for Goldberg’s notion of writing practice, where “the aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what your mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel” (9).

As Goldberg suggests, too many times we write with the end in mind, with a particular audience or publication goal in sight. When we do, we do not allow enough time for the work to develop naturally; we do not maximize the good raw material available from which to choose. Editing and marketing are important, but as Haake suggests, “these (professional and institutional) concerns are most properly addressed after, not before the writing” (72). By measuring student productivity in raw material rather than finished product, we encourage them to write without internal censors. By teaching different tactics for vision and revision we help set reasonable and more targeted expectations for student work.

Particularly in introductory level workshops, I would implement Goldberg’s timed-exercise practice, which entails writing within a basic set of rules for a set time-limit. The rules are simple and include: keep your hand moving; don’t cross out; don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, staying within the margins or the lines on the page; lose control; don’t think; don’t get logical; go for the jugular; explore “scary” or naked” thoughts (Goldberg 8).

While I strongly believe in the usefulness of guided writing and free journaling as means of generating raw material, the process of revision, rather, is something that each writer must discover for himself. There is something to be said for listening to the workshop and another for determining their voice and what it is that they want to say, receiving feedback openly and without prejudice, but being brave enough to stay true to themselves. T. Coraghessan (Tom) Boyle, award-winning writer and teacher in the writing program at the University of Southern California, still believes in the bubble approach as the best means for beginning the revision process. “What’s relevant is for the author to discover what intelligent people think he or she meant, then they can go from there” (Neubauer 25).

I agree that it is beneficial for the writer to be exposed to this kind of feedback between the vision and re-vision stages. And while sensitivity in the workshop is important, it is also important, particularly at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level, to balance this sensitivity with tough, constructive criticism. As Boyle also says, “I’ve been in workshops [where] everyone [is] so supportive, loving each other. Great. But what’s accomplished? Nothing. I’m very tough line-to-line. This is professional” (Neubauer 25). This kind of professional feedback will help develop the writer’s ability to determine what feedback to accept and what to throw away, which may be the single most important component of a writer’s learning process.

IV.            Thou shall create a plan and be prepared to improvise

As amorphous as the nature of writing instruction continues to be, we must not develop pedagogies that are fixed. We must be prepared to adapt our methods, and maybe even our core beliefs to match the goals of the program, the class, and the individual student. This does not mean that we should sacrifice our own beliefs for some other that we may not agree with, but we have to understand that students and programs change in response to market conditions, and that we, as facilitators and service providers, need to adapt as well. Some programs will clearly require teachers who have a strong classroom presence. Imagine how one might teach in a hyper competitive program like Iowa, where students expect and deserve strong leadership and hard work. Such an approach might not work in a junior college environment or in a classroom of undergraduates, yet we might find ourselves being asked to teach in one environment one semester and another environment the next. We must adapt if we are to be successful, and such adaptation requires us to have a plan within which we have the freedom to improvise.

I think it is important to see our workshops as part of the whole. One cannot create the framework for a class without understanding the personality of that class and the needs of the course. Likewise, one cannot develop a course without examining how the course serves the larger program and how the program serves the university and the students. We as teachers must remember that our role is to lead, but also to serve. One way to stay nimble is to remain connected to the larger field of pedagogical studies, both in creative writing and also in composition, so that we can benefit from what others have experienced in different educational contexts. Moreover, unless I’ve missed it, our profession desperately needs a journal dedicated both to pedagogical questions and to practical concerns in teaching creative writing.

V.            Thou shall encourage and practice freedom with restraint

We as writers have the freedom of speech guaranteed to us by the constitution, but with this freedom comes the responsibility to be accurate, truthful and respectful, both in our writings, and particularly in the criticism of the writings of others. This freedom is one of the blessings of western democracy, there are many writers in this world who do not have it, and it is for their sake and in their honor that we must understand the value of ours and fight to keep it.

This notion of freedom and restraint must also apply to how we treat others in the workshop, how we prejudge and respond to literature created outside our own culture, how we understand and conceive of approaches to literary study, and how we alter our pedagogies to reflect cultural and theoretical shifts. In the past twenty years, great changes have been made to the “canon” through the hard work of young faculty who insist that the works and voices of women and underrepresented groups be heard in literature and writing classrooms. I applaud this effort and am glad to see young students exposed to such a wide and diverse group of voices, a diversity which, deservedly so, matches that of the students themselves and one from which I never benefitted as a young student. But this redefining of the canon has created an environment where works of literary quality and pedagogical value are being forsaken simply on the basis of their connection to the “old” canon. In this way we are not broadening the canon to reflect our diversity, but rather narrowing it by a process of swapping out one culture’s works for another, as if the size must remain constant. So while we must be grateful to finally have the freedom to teach more representative works, we must also continue to have respect for works which, rightly or wrongly, have an intertextual connection that is central to the development of western literature.

VI.            Thou shall boldly state absolutes in the realm of the relative

Permit me this one digression. This is a pet peeve of mine and perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to postmodernism, but relativism doesn’t work for everyone. In some ways, the notion that everything is relative, while philosophically true, is intellectually false. It conveys that, for some, even feces can taste like fudge. If one strongly identifies with a certain belief, provided they recognize that it may not be so for everyone (acknowledge its relativity) we must acknowledge that for them (in their mind, their reality) it is an absolute truth.

Particularly in upper level programs, writers need to hear when something they’ve tried doesn’t work, and if it doesn’t work for anyone in the room, despite the fact that this reaction is relative, it might be considered to be absolutely a bad idea to leave it as-is. If, as teachers, we are to speak in absolutes, however, it is important to remember our role and responsibility. As David Huddle at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College writes, “It is not my duty to tailor my teaching to each individual student; it is not my duty to attempt to make writers of my students. It is my duty to be a certain kind of a teacher, to try to be consistent in the values that I try to convey to my students, and to let them use me as they will […]” (75). This consistency helps reinforce that there are absolutes in the world of the relative, and relatives in the world of the absolute.

VII.            Thou shall teach reading and writing, and the importance of both

Eve Shelnutt, poet, writer and former teacher at Ohio University, maintains “Many writers choose to write without having done the necessary preparation, and that is: to become readers. There is a kind of arrogance we have given young writers that lets them assume that ignorance is not something to be critical of” (Neubauer 206).

In this current age of teaching for the test in high schools, most new undergraduates are far too under-read to approach creative writing with any of the necessary prerequisites. While once considered the domain of literature classrooms, teaching reading through the eyes of craft is central to the writer’s understanding of how language works and how meaning manifests. However, in the critical revolution of the last 30 years, the focus on craft analysis in literature classrooms has all but disappeared, leaving it to creative writing instructors to pick apart the text with an eye towards how it was assembled.

If I were to be hired to design a creative writing program, graduate or undergraduate, I think I would ascribe to the model currently in use at the Bennington Writer’s workshops, which is summed up in their new advertising slogan: “Read 100 books, Write 1″. I would like to implement a system where the program selects 50 books and the student chooses the other 50, half of which are subject to approval from the chair. As these books are read, writers would be challenged to respond to them in writing, to examine their own views of how the texts worked on them, and to determine what lessons they might take away to be used in their own work.

VIII.            Thou shall coach students to strive for art but be prepared for life

Creative writers, like most artists, need to be in it for the long run. As Natalie Goldberg writes, “Art lives in the Big World. One poem or story doesn’t matter one way or the other. It is the process of writing and life that matters” (12).

Oscar Wilde’s claim that “all art is quite useless” never rang more true than in today’s market of reality television, shortened attention spans, and the general decline of reading for pleasure, as noted in reports like Reading at Risk from the National Endowment for the Arts. So then why do we write, and furthermore, why do we strive to write something that has as its goal, something higher than commonality?

One reason is our own judgment system (an absolute in the realm of the relative), which tells us that some things are simply better than others, so we strive to write at that level. Still, writing is more than product; it is process. As Eve Shelnutt writes, “…creative writing is not just another course. It is a profound question that’s being asked. I feel that I have to have students understand the questions that art poses to them, in terms of a way to live, a focus of their minds in study and the rewards that it can contain” (Neubauer 197).

So as we work hard to produce “art” we should be prepared to enjoy what else writing brings to us: the ability to get our innermost thoughts and dreams down on paper; the encouragement to express ourselves in a way that differs markedly from what we speak and how we act; and the pure desire to leave our imprint on the world. But the skills we learn in creative writing are just as applicable to “real life” as to art. Students gain an understanding of literature and enjoyment of language, and those skills increase our appreciation of everything we read and improve our ability to compose writing of all kinds. Within the writing life we also build a sense of community of likeminded people, a group that shares our appreciation for what is, inherently, a lonely, almost futile, pursuit. It’s good to have someone else along for the journey.

I agree with Chris Green, who writes, “Life as a writer in the social world means more than just writing poems…it means negotiating the vast, complex, nebulous, tyrannical, ever present, varied structures and institutions of publication, education, readings, employment, community, politics and family. For teachers of creative writing, the trick is to make these lessons apparent to the student” (155).

IX.            Thou shall lead as an equal

Famed creative writing teacher Wallace Stegner says it best: “How can anyone ‘teach’ writing, when he himself, as a writer, is never sure what he is doing?” (9). I see our job as facilitating learning, and if we are to create a forum for the improvement of writing that also encourages the freedom to take risks, then the feedback we provide, especially as the facilitator, needs to provoke the student writer’s own sense of discovery. Rather than prescribe solutions or recite gospel, we can ask the writer questions that she may not be able to ask herself. We can help guide the students to their own conclusions by presenting the workshop as a hired test audience for our work, a group of individuals whose varied backgrounds and abilities mirror those of the other readers in the marketplace. It’s a focus group, not a jury,

Katherine Haake writes that every student “is capable of surprising both me and her- or himself, and … my job as a teacher is to create the structure within which surprise can occur” (64). I believe surprises occur where suggestions overtake demands and guidance supplants prescription. Monk Shunryu Suzuki expresses a Zen proverb that I often fail to heed: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few” (21). By keeping our own mind in this state, we can provide our students with endless opportunities and avenues to pursue. By diminishing the role and expectations of us as the “experts,” we encourage them to write without fear.

Not all our students will publish, or even want to, so we need to demonstrate , as Haake writes, the principle that “Writing is an act of faith, yes, but it is just as much a way of life that provides an organizing structure for the way we are in this world” (76). For many of us, to learn to write is to learn how to live.

We also need to lead by example, that is, to write along with our students and to share our works with them in a spirit of open dialogue. David Huddle, who submits his own creative work for his students to review, feels “I’m a better writer for having submitted my writing to the workshop for scrutiny, and I hope my workshops are more nourishing communities as a result of my having brought my work into them” (79). So while, it is certainly risky to show the leader’s weaknesses in draft form, the long term benefits to the students will most certainly outweigh the short term pain to the teacher!

X.            Thou shall temper the dream with pragmatism

Eve Shelnut remarks, “I suppose a lot of my work…is in helping [students] answer the question, ‘Why would anyone spend an entire lifetime producing art?’” (Neubauer (207).

Many of those who enroll in graduate creative writing courses do so for the goal of publication. They write because they love to write, and they hope to one day achieve some sort of recognition for their efforts. Many of them know the odds they are facing, and some would argue that it is not the business of teachers to squash their dream of making a living with their creative writing. But I would argue that anyone getting into this profession should be aware of the business side of writing and the risks it entails. Not only should we be taught how to submit for publication, understand what the specific markets and opportunities are, and be exposed to publishers and editors who can share insights about the publishing process, but also we should be exposed to other ways that we might pay off the significant educational loans we have incurred as a result.

The skills taught in creative writing are useful in professional writing of various kinds. Journalism, advertising, fundraising are just a few of the fields where I have been able to get paid for my writing talents, and while the works weren’t always poetic or fictional, they were always creative. In some ways, one might argue for a course that focuses specifically on creative nonfiction, which has the largest degree of applicability to other forms of professional writing. I believe we owe it to the students to allow them the space to pursue their dream, but to also expose them to the pragmatic acts of the writer’s existence that may be what enables them to pursue that dream in the first place.

The idea of tempering the dream must also be broached through the necessary evils of grading and evaluating student work. In what is seen as purely subjective, in what is touted as a world of relativism, in an environment where we are supposed to encourage safety and freedom, how can we fairly, and in good conscience, rank anything? Here I tend to embrace three ideas that make me feel at least comfortable doing so.

First, on evaluation, I believe a term’s worth of student work should be evaluated based on the portfolio method, which looks at improvement over time and takes into account, responsiveness, participation, timeliness, and engagement with the subject matter and assignments. Simply put, this is a writing class, so please write and get better as you go.

Second, on grading, I believe in the British model of Excellent, Satisfactory, and Failing, or in an American context, A, B, F. Everyone who meets the requirements gets a B; some small percentage, perhaps never more than ten or twenty, get an A; and the F is reserved for those who for one reason or another, simply fail to meet the basic requirements of the course.

Third, I would encourage one-on-one meetings throughout the course where students can receive frank and open feedback about how I feel their work is going. This private meeting enables me to judge just how serious the student is about writing and ask them what level of feedback they would like. So on a one-to-one level, if they want me to be tough, so be it. If on the other hand they show no real affinity for writing as a career or cannot placate their emotions enough to receive tough feedback, then perhaps I could offer more gentle encouragement. In this way I can measure their desires and expectations and meet them outside of the rubrics and confines of university grading or workshop evaluation environments.

Bridging the great divide: flexibility and understanding

So, despite my offering these perspectives as the voice of God, I’ll reiterate again that I see these commandments as set in sand, not stone. The decision of how to balance these individual guidelines, both within each juxtaposition I have presented, and in relation to each other within the course or program as a whole, must lie with the department, the teacher, and the individual students. It is, therefore, important to strive for balance within balance, like the ancient Zen monks who occasionally got roaring drunk as a way of demonstrating moderation in moderation. Every now and again, it must be OK to weigh more heavily on one side or the other.

Nicholas Delbanco, writer and faculty member in the University of Michigan writing program, states his own commandments thus:

The only way to learn one’s art is through back-breaking labor that must not seem like work. After the seeming-impossible has become difficult, the difficult habitual, and the habitual easy, true mastery begins. We must listen to the verdict of the judge-whether it be praise, dispraise, or the most likely, a suspended sentence-then appeal. We must work through derivation toward the original voice-remembering that “originality” is likely to be a compound of influence so multiform and various it cannot be assessed. We need to know an oxymoron from chiasmus to know freedom within limits as the root and force of syntax. Our certainties will turn to doubt, our rote learning grow improvisational (40).

It is my hope that through developing, practicing, and altering my commandments, that I might develop a means to balance the acrimony between factions both within the English departments and within creative writing programs. I find it painfully ironic that, in the academic world where relativism reigns, individuals are so set in their own views and ways that they fail to see the benefits of what we can learn from each other. We should all be free to evolve, to discover, and perhaps with greater compassion, to practice what we teach.

Works Cited

Delbanco Nicholas. “Judgment: An Essay.” Writers on Writing. Eds. Pack, Robert and Jay Parini. Hanover, NH: Middlebury College Press, 1991. 29-40.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.

Green, Chris. “Materializing the Sublime Reader: Cultural Studies, Reader Response, and Community Service in the Creative Writing Workshop.” College English 64 (2001): 153-174.

Haake, Katharine. What Our Speech Disrupts: Feminism and Creative Writing Studies. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.

Huddle, David. “Taking What You Need, Giving What You Can: The Writer as Student and Teacher.” Writers on Writing. Eds. Pack, Robert and Jay Parini. Hanover, NH: Middlebury College Press, 1991. 74-85.

Neubauer, Alexander. Conversations on Writing Fiction: Interviews with 13 Distinguished Teachers of Fiction Writing in America. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

Parini, Jay. “Literary Theory and the Writer.” Colors of a Different Horse. Ed. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 127-130.

Ritter, Kelly. “Professional Writers/Writing Professionals: Revamping Teacher Training in Creative Writing Ph. D. Programs” College English 64 (2001): 205-227.

Sarbo, Linda and Joseph M. Moxley. “Creativity Research and Classroom Practice.” Colors of a Different Horse. Ed. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 133-144.

Smiley, Jane. “What Stories Teach Their Writers: The Purpose and Practice of Revision.” Creating Fiction. Ed. Julie Checkoway. Cincinnati: Story Press, 1999. 244-255.

Stegner, Wallace. On the Teaching of Creative Writing. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 1988.

Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. New York: Weatherhill, 1970.

You call this art?

In art, as in engineering, the past 30 years have seen tremendous diversification. These pages are inadequate to list all the technology that art has adopted–in part because art is difficult to define. Despite the lack of hard and fast rules, certain requirements guided the choice of the nine examples presented here from the many fine works at the “Alternating Currents” exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art, in California. Though not always obvious from the photographs, each work meets the following criteria when confronted by the viewer in person.

• The art had to be visual or have a visual component. It could give off auditory and other sensory stimuli, but sight had to be the primary means of communicating with the viewer.
• The art had to do something–move, talk, explode–just as long as it was something more than a static representation. Since technology is often evoked to produce physical or virtual motion, most of the items portrayed here are kinetic. Although many works that fall under the banner of Art & Technology do so because they comment on technology as a subject, works that use technology as a medium looked more likely to interest IEEE Spectrum readers.
• The art had to communicate. In the age of electronics, communication often means audio or video, but even in silent or static works, a message should be conveyed, be it obvious, covert, reportorial, revelatory, or fanatical. Regardless of the meaning, the image should stimulate thought and stir debate.
• One person’s trash is another person’s treasure–not a small issue! Having said art is hard to define, if not indefinable, right at this moment we are attempting to define it, categorize it, and judge it. Does art need to be beautiful? If it displeases or disturbs me, do I still have to regard it as art? These complicated issues bring to light the most important and self-evident statement that can be made about art: art is subjective.

In the following pages are works in many styles that will elicit an infinity of opinions from viewers. Yet they do have two things in common: they have been dubbed “art” by experts in that field, and they use technology as a medium, and quite often, as a message.

Spectrum is indebted to Beth Venn and Cathy Kimball, co-curators of “Alternating Currents,” for the interpretive captions. Unless otherwise indicated, each photograph shows an item from the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Dimensions are in inches; height precedes width precedes depth. Photographs appear here through the generosity of the artists and through special arrangement with the owner of each work. 

Art’s Sake

As with other areas of society, fine art was not immune from the sweeping technological advances that began in the early 1960s. The avant-garde artists of the ’60s counter-culture, in direct collaboration with engineers, welcomed the introduction of emerging technologies and employed them in ways that changed how art is created, defined, and appreciated [see “The engineer as catalyst,”]. In the decades since, this merger of art and engineering has blossomed into what museum curators and art historians now like to term the Art & Technology Movement.

Technology itself has had a multi-faceted effect on the world of art. These days, art may approach technology as a subject, an artistic medium, a message, or any combination of the three. As a subject, technology’s effect on society is well documented by today’s artists. Sometimes, oil paints or bronze or other traditional materials are harnessed to the portrayal of the positive or negative effects of technology, while at other times, artists employ technology as an attention-grabber, to comment on itself.

As a medium, technology may be considered an extension of, say, watercolors or clay. Today’s artists use motors, transmitters, and computers both behind the scenes and in the finished work. Technology has also transcended the bounds of the visual by incorporating sound, light, and motion. The moving shapes draw the viewers of a work deeper within its toils, even as the technological addition exacts from them a wholly new way of experiencing art.

In most works of art, subject and medium together affect the response to a painting, statue, or what have you, but the outcome is not always predetermined. The message put forth from a work, as interpreted by a viewer, is highly individual.

In fact, no interpretation of a work of art is ever universally accepted, and none will be proposed here. Rather, this report sketches in a perspective from which readers may draw their own conclusions. The objective is to provoke thought and retrospection, not to take sides on what is or is not “art.” But it seems fitting, as the turn of century, indeed the millennium, approaches, to step back and form our own opinions on what art is saying about this Age of Technology.

Pixels at an exhibition

Assembling an interpretive report of the Art & Technology Movement would have been a monumental task, in light of the relative youth of these works and the myriad opinions on what constitutes a successful work of art. The movement is 30 years old and shows no sign of ending. Happily, the selection of works for inclusion in this article was aided by two leading U.S. art museums, which mounted a major exhibition on the theme in October 1997.

“Alternating Currents: American Art in the Age of Technology” is a joint effort of California’s San Jose Museum of Art and New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art. The show, which runs in San Jose through mid-October 1998, features over 60 works representative of the Art & Technology movement from 1959 to the present. In this cross-section of late 20th century technological art, each work is poised to become a mine of fascination for art historians of the next millennium.

Most of the items were selected from the Permanent Collection at the Whitney Museum, long a promoter of Art & Technology. And while traditional art forms such as painting or bronze sculpture are of course still practiced, the arrival of new technologies has lured even these contemporary artists beyond the purely visual to incorporate other sensory stimuli in some of their works.

At first, the sheer variety of the exhibits on display in San Jose is overwhelming–a veritable onslaught of light, video, sound, size, and movement lays siege to one’s senses. The gamut runs from traditional pencil sketches to huge inflatable ice bags [Figure 1]. So what threads are common to the exhibition as a whole?

The primary component is, of course, technology, according to Cathy Kimball, associate curator at the San Jose Museum of Art, although not solely in its use as a creative device. “The works are not all tech-based,” she told IEEE Spectrum. “Many of the more traditional works were included since they speak to the paradox of technology in our lives, how everything has simultaneously become simpler yet more complex.” For some artists, it seems, the best way to comment on the effects of technology is to revert to the simplest and most traditional of artistic media.

Variations on a theme

The curators grouped the works by gallery, with a view to suggesting how technology has meshed with works of visual art, and what the results may say about the effects of technology on society.

One gallery, entitled Challenging Perceptions, houses items that tend to illustrate the artists’ shift from traditional materials to experimentation with “the powerful visual imagery of both complex technological devices, and explorations of light and space,” to quote Beth Venn, associate curator at the Whitney Museum. They illustrate the possibilities of electric light and kinetic sculpture, introducing a radical change from the art of prior centuries. This sharp contrast in style, fueled in part by the technological magic used to create these works, defy the viewer to answer the question, “Is real, real?”

Consider Robert Irwin’s No Title. Here, artificial light is deployed to obliterate the physical boundaries of the work, asking the viewer to determine where the wall ends and the art begins [Figure 2]. Engineer Harold Edgerton [see “An EE for all seasons,” Trudy E. Bell, Spectrum, September 1989, pp. 52-57] manipulates the stroboscope to help him photograph what the human eye cannot capture [Figure 3]. The peculiar beauty of a bullet racing through an apple flowers from his inventive merger of light and motion with photography, and though the event is too fast for the human eye to see, the photograph proves how it all happened.

Or does it? Photography, once considered so honest that it could serve documentary purposes, can now be digitally altered without betraying the fact and has therefore lost a degree of trustworthiness. Some of the San Jose exhibits accordingly demonstrate the early capabilities of digitally enhanced photography. The axiom, “The camera doesn’t lie” may no longer be true. With the aid of a computer, the camera may lie just as seamlessly as it tells the truth, further blurring the line between illusion and reality.

Another gallery, Message & Narrative, examines how technology can transform the very nature of looking at a piece of art, in particular its contribution to the viewer’s interpretation of a work’s meaning. In this gallery, artist Jenny Holzer uses a light-emitting-diode sign to directly communicate alternating messages that in another age might have been a series of static, woodblock prints [Figure 4]. Pepón Osorio and Nam June Paik combine found objects with video and audio to erect virtual monuments to deceased acquaintances [Figure 5 and Figure 6]. In their thought-provoking works, Tony Oursler and Alan Rath use technology as tool, interpreter, and messenger [Figure 7 and Figure 8].

“It is important to recognize that not all art that concerns itself with issues of technology is necessarily ‘high-tech,’” the Whitney’s Venn said. Indeed, many of the exhibition’s works are drawn or painted, differing only stylistically from the portraits and landscapes of centuries past. The issues they expose can be foreboding or optimistic, offering as many types of opinion as there are types of artist. Despite all the technology displayed in the exhibit, however, the foremost byproduct of the Information Age–the computer–is all but absent.

Where’s the computer?

The art establishment by and large spurns the computer when it is used by artists to replicate traditional methods and materials. The feeling seems to be that artists who utilize computer software solely to produce and output a digital painting or other conventional work are neither battling the traditional mainstream nor advancing the field of visual art in any other way. For today’s artist, using the computer as a tool requires far less skill than mastering the techniques of oil painting or charcoal sketching, for example, since with the click of a mouse users can now automate what were once virtuoso artistic techniques.

Venn, for one, said that using the computer to generate images is not enough to elevate the work to a higher level in today’s art world. “The result has to be different from anything else to really make an impact, but all this technology will not eliminate the use of traditional materials and media,” she said. “Traditional media will continue to coexist with technological ones, much in the same way that radio managed to coexist with television. People have different tastes, so there’s lots of room.”

Art & Technology guru Billy Klüver is of the same opinion [again, see “The engineer as catalyst,”]. “Certainly you can consider works generated on a computer as ‘art,’ but it doesn’t interest me,” Klüver said. “Too many artists feel if they work on the computer, they don’t have to do anything dangerous. Art just can’t sit there. It has to do something.”

On the other hand, artist and educator Paul Brown theorized that computer technology will eventually spawn a revolutionary artistic medium, one in which the computer is not just a tool for the artist, but a medium for the art itself. Many young artists are working in new forms that again challenge the viewer’s understanding of what art can be. As with all avant-garde work, the viewer must re-examine their definition and appreciation for art.

“It will require a shift in the way art is perceived,” said Brown, a member of the International Society of Arts, Sciences, and Technology, San Francisco and editor of Fine Art Forum. “It is slow in developing for a number of reasons, but if historical models–like the emergence of photography or motion pictures–are any indication, I would expect a new medium to emerge in the early years of the new millennium.”

Venn, Klüver, and Brown make the same excellent point. The use of a computer to produce static images, no matter how high-tech those images may look, turns it into simply another tool for the artist–a new-age electronic paintbox–and leaves the onlooker literally on the outside. The computer’s strength is its ability to interact directly with the viewer, seen or unseen, not unlike the early kinetic art of Klüver’s colleagues [see photos in “The engineer as catalyst,”]. When a viewer moves a mouse and so alters the artist’s image within a given set of parameters–or else triggers other sensations like touch, sound, and smell–the motion or event serves to involve that person or audience with the work.

Many works use a computer behind the scenes, as in the design of a mechanical work or in the software component of multimedia installations. In the finished piece, however, the computer may not be seen at all. While the computer may serve to display art or create art, its real potential emerges when used in both capacities, as evidenced by the only computer-interactive work in the San Jose exhibition.

In Joel Slayton’s To Not See a Thing [Figure 9], the viewer manipulates a transparent Plexiglas cube containing a motion sensor. The movement is displayed as a wire-frame drawing on a 15-inch color monitor, giving the viewer a visual representation of the cube’s movements. Meanwhile, the attached Sun workstation records all the coordinates transmitted by the moving box and will eventually compile them into one gigantic collaborative video file.

Interestingly, even though there are likely to be many thousands of user sessions, most visitors respond to the work in the same manner. First, they handle the box gently, watching the monitor to see how the wireframe cube reacts to their actions. Then, a little at a time, they handle it more roughly, starting slowly and building in speed and force. Some jump around with it, some dance with it. Eventually, they try to outdo it, moving it faster and more vigorously until the graphics cannot keep up.

This treatment of the art work suggests a parallel with society’s handling of technology. If the Plexiglas box is seen as a metaphor for new technology, then viewers handle it with the same actions as society does, in the same order–trepidation, familiarity, competition. Again, art has communicated. Only this time, it’s not just an artist’s suggestion of how society may respond to new technology. Like a good scientist, somewhere on the Sun workstation’s hard disk, there exists the evidence and data to prove his theory.