Writing Wrecks

Page 4 American Book Review Authority, talent, privilege—any of those things one either brings or doesn’t bring to class—take a back seat to the poem on the table. Unlike other workshops I’ve participated in, there’s no drama or emotional fireworks. We let our guards down; we move forward. After four years of poetry workshops at USM, one thing I’ve noticed is that those students who do the work, who show up every week and find something to contribute, who keep an open mind and listen to the rest of the class, improve without exception. In my own experience, workshop has given me both the guidance and freedom to develop my own taste and modes of expression. My instructors and peers have offered invaluable advice over the years, but they’ve also given me the space to do my own thing. The result is I have a much better sense of what I like and why in my own poetry and when reading others. The point here is not to present our program as a paragon (though we’re mightily proud of our students and what they continue to accomplish) but to present some of the strengths of the workshop method, which has had its share of detractors but which continues to help writers hone both their editing skills and their capacity for generosity. Angela Ball’s latest book of poems is Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds (2007), which received the Donald Hall Prize from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she teaches in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is an associate editor of Mississippi Review. Steal This Book Leslee Becker Maybe we teach creative writing for the bread. “We all hunger for the love of our fellow creatures, and when one is hungry, even a half-baked loaf tastes sweet” (Anton Chekhov). Raymond Carver would add gravy. He ran a workshop once for us Iowa inmates. I liked his modesty and uncertainty. He mostly apologized, insisting he didn’t know beans about teaching. “Don’t get me wrong now. Maybe it’s just me and my taste, but I wonder what might happen in this story if the writer made the main character a bartender, not a lawyer. Why not give it a try?” He called us students writers. I confess that I long to be a student always, learning from my own work and the work of master writers, but also knowing that the process moves along more expediently in writing programs, when we get the attention we crave. I went to Hollins, Iowa, and Stanford, teaching at the latter two places, and stealing from Richard Dillard, John L’Heureux, Nancy Packer, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, and Hilma Wolitzer. Now, as the Director of Colorado State University’s Creative Writing Program, I’m being asked to discuss pedagogy , and expecting to be hauled off to the Home for the Easily Bewildered, or to the penitentiary for committing fraud and theft. My colleagues and I are unashamedly various in our approaches, probably satisfying current students, and frustrating prospective ones, who beg for statements of our teaching philosophy. We’re the products of writing programs, and we likely try to emulate our best mentors. I steal flagrantly, even that old canard about how creative writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned. At CSU, the learning is done intimately and extensively, the students’ three-year stretch culminating in a thesis and portfolio of their writing, self-assessments about courses, workshops, internships, and a hefty list of annotated works, all the requirements showing that we honor studio work and close reading. I never asked my teachers for their philosophy; I saw in it action, when Richard Dillard remarked that it’s exciting and titillating to watch a field of grass being mowed down, but isn’t there something eminently satisfying by waiting to watch it grow? When I started writing and considering where I’d serve time, I read Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, seeing him tackle the question—can creative writing be taught?—in 1979. “Yes it...