By: Jeannine

Jeannine — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:03:50 +0000

Dear Karen,
I remember reading posts before getting my MFA too, trying to decide if it was worth the hardship and cost to attend.
The weird thing is, you probably only get out of your MFA experience what you put in. As far as credentials go, it’s fine, but there are no magic answers. I got to work with four tremendous poets I respect, and all of them had different ideas about what made a good poem, a good line break, etc. Talking about it with other students, and with many different faculty, you start to fuse ideas together and find out what works for you. I did lots of reading of poetics during that time as well, and discovered there is no one path/one answer to create good writing. The best things about the MFA: getting feedback on your work, talking about the things you care about in writing, working with other writers and being exposed to new work – you can create all of those experiences outside of the MFA program too, I think, though it takes a bit of effort.

By: Karen J. Weyant

Karen J. Weyant — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:51:22 +0000

I read all the MFA articles on blogs with great interest — not because I think there is some great battle between those with MFA’s and those without, but because I often debate about whether or not to get an MFA. Money comes into play, of course, and it has been the big reason that I don’t move foreward. But for me, I always thought that those with some MFAs had some magical knowledge about poetry that I don’t have — like what makes a good line break, or how to incorporate more lyrical language into a line.

Comments on: Happy Thanksgiving and to MFA or NYC: flaws in the logic

By: Jeannine

By: Karen J. Weyant