From the Heart First

Over the past few weeks, I have had a couple of people write me to request that I edit their poetry for them. Both people who contacted me were students who were getting their Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at very well-respected universities. Needless to say, I was shocked at their request. In essence, what they wanted me to do was re-write their poetry for them, and one of the students even gave me a list of parameters that her professor was looking for in her poetry.

I did not look upon these requests as coming from students who were lazy. After all, they had already written the poems. What I saw in these requests, however, was the failure of academia to teach poetry as an art.

I took many poetry workshops when I was pursuing my MFA, and I understand where these students are coming from, and I sympathise with them. Because academia has taken poetry away from art and has broken it down into a series of steps that should include this or that, the creativity was taken out of the poem.

To boot, one of the students told me that he was required to write about a particular subject that was assigned by the professor. Needless to say, the subject was very political and fit right in with academia's definition of what poetry should be. I could tell that this student's heart was not in the project at all, and for him, it was more or less a task that he had to accomplish.

As a former writing instructor, I could not move myself to editing these poems because that would be a form of plagiarism, and I do not think that would do anyone any good. I did, however, share my thoughts about poetry with these students. I told them that poetry is an art, and doing it well means that it has to come from the heart. It cannot be forced, and it must flow willingly from their pen.

I'm sure that I did not give them the answers they were looking for, and I do feel sorry for them that their hopes and dreams of taking a good poetry workshop was let down by academic poets. I hope they learn that this is not what poetry is all about, and they continue to practice the art from their own eyes and heart.

My friend who I mentioned in the last post is an academic himself, but he has rebelled against the academic mentality in regards to poetry. He said it best when he told me that he has reviewed six poetry books in the past year, all from first-time poets, and all from academic authors. He said these poems lacked depth and had no soul. I imagine, just like everything else coming out of our universities, that they were political and social as well. This is why we need to give poetry back to the general reader, and this is why we need to let poetry become the art that it is. There is nothing wrong with making a statement in poetry. Don't get me wrong about that. But it cannot be the only purpose of the poem or a collection of poems. Poetry, on that level, become hateful and angry, and, to me, poetry should embody much more.