This week I linked to one poet’s concerns about the top MFA programs ranked in Poets & Writers. Now, a pretty impressive list of creative writing instructors have some questions for Poets & Writers itself.
Poets & Writers’ MFA Rankings
Invisible Translators
“One is less likely to overlook or be unfairly harsh to a translator if one has been a translator, and one is less likely to fault an original writer for weaknesses in translated prose or poetry if one has a sense of the pitfalls into which a translator can stumble—a sense I am still developing after years of translating poetry and prose.” Over at Asymptote Journal, Sue Burke and Maia Evrona look at reviews of books in translation.
All Wrong
"After years of reading, teaching, and writing about the book, though, I’ve come to believe that... our understanding of what is comic and what is serious in Huck Finn says more about America in the last century than America in the time Twain wrote the book." Andrew Levy writes for Salon about childhood, race, and "dedicated amnesia" in Mark Twain's controversial classic.
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A Quality of Immortality
"When watching [Abbas] Kiarostami films, one also has a great sense of another kind of freedom not found in Hollywood movies, nor in most European art films: freedom from the creeping realization that a film we are watching was made by a cynical shit or a self-deluded megalomaniac." Here's something you don't see every day -- an essay that begins with an Independence Day showing of The Purge: Election Year, and somehow ends up at a poetic examination of Kiarostami's artistic legacy.
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Letter to Harlem
Over at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins writes on calling Harlem home. As she puts it, “Blackness is not one specific characteristic. It is many things, things that I have yet to discover. It means that different variations of blackness can find home in one another.”
Football Fiction
Recommended Listening: Michael Nye reading his new short story about a former NFL lineman, "Beauty in the Age of Chaos and Savagery," for The Kenyon Review. For more Nye, read his 2013 Year in Reading post.
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Jay-Z and Michiko K.: Kindred Spirits
Michiko Kakutani's generous and oddly moving review of Jay-Z's Decoded - in which she seems to find a kindred spirit - almost makes me want to take back all the mean things I've said about her. I still don't trust her judgment, but the review's worth reading just for the mental image of her in big headphones, nodding along to "Streets Is Watching." Go 'head, shorty.
“A move that was, in a way, Chappelle’s birthright”
The thing about Dave Chappelle, writes Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah in her marvelous essay on the comedian’s family history, the success of Chappelle’s Show, and how the two informed his opinions on race, “is that he was suddenly vaulted into the awkward position of being the world’s most famous interlocutor in a conversation about race—the one conversation no one likes having.” In light of his recent heckling in Connecticut, as well as the continued misinterpretation of his comedy, “it’s easy to understand why Chappelle was done with being misread, tired of explaining, [and so he] finished talking.”
I still cannot for the life of me understand why Poets & Writers keeps publishing the shoddy research and writing of Seth Abramson. Every article he writes becomes a lightning rod for controversy and complaint. I don’t think I’ve ever read one positive, supportive response to one of his rankings lists.
Abramson is obviously very dishonest and his work certainly shouldn’t be published by someone like Poets and Writers. But they probably publish it because the controversy and complaints move copies of the magazine.
The Methodology Article is available for FREE online and is 75 pages long (MS Word format, double-spaced) and explains every single aspect of the methodology in detail so exhaustive it’s actually been criticized by AWP for going on TOO long. Poets & Writers is a non-profit magazine which puts the MFA issue online for FREE every single year. What planet do you live on in which those two facts lead you to call the methodology’s author “dishonest” and the magazine itself one which is only interested in “moving copies of the magazine”? That’d be as crazy as me saying that you have the guts to make these specious claims under your real name.
I’ve read Abramson’s discussion of methodology, and that’s exactly why I think he is dishonest and every person I know who has ever interacted with him has felt the same way. Length does not equal honesty though. Who on earth would think that?
But there is certainly a large volume of words out there on the subject and people can read and make their own decisions.
D.,
Agreed. I’m a poet and professor, and I do not have one writer friend or colleague in my field who doesn’t think the methodology behind these rankings is completely specious and ridiculous. I’ll add that I’ve never seen anyone but Seth publicly defend the methodology behind these rankings, not even someone from Poets & Writers magazine. Sometimes you’ll see applicants posting about how they found these rankings “helpful”, but I’ve actually never seen one of these applicant defend the methodology.
I’ll add that I don’t personally object to the idea of rankings. Like others, I just think they need to be done in a more responsible and logical way. I mean, to not let anyone who has ever attended or taught in an MFA Program participate in the poll seems borderline absurd.
A good explanation of how flawed these rankings, and the alleged methodology, are at even the most basic statistically level:
http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2011/09/poets-and-writers-mfa-rankings-garbage-in-garbage-out-by-stacey-harwood.html
Poets & Writers has responded to the open letter: http://at.pw.org/o6e4Ss.
Hey Everyone, I hope that the acceptances keep rolling in this MFA season! I know how exhausting the application process can be and that even writers with exceptional work are not always given the chance to attend the program of their dreams. A friend and I are planning to launch a fiction anthology–Best New American Slush–that will feature the work of MFA applicants that have not been accepted to a program this year. We are hoping to showcase a portion of the great talent that has not yet made into the madness that is the MFA world. If you are interested in submitting, please feel free to check out our page for instructions and further updates.