Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
I think "academic" poetry took the left turn into irrelevance at the exact moment the MFA was invented. Work done to impress ones adviser is not likely to be anything but obtuse and rarefied. It also limits the class of "real" poets to college types. Middle class kids that could afford to have a romantic major. Of course there are exceptions and in my opinion these exceptions tend to be stronger poets. Replace poet with painter, journalist, writer or jazz musician and I think it reads as true.