A Million MFAs Are Not Enough - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597097241 ISBN 13: 9781597097246

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2016

Synopsis

Something is rotten in the state of American poetry.  With respect to audience and artistry, poetry has shot itself in many portions of its anatomy, and keeps blasting.  The fact that vast numbers of poems are published every year, and a large number of Creative Writing students and graduates combine to read a few of them, does not mean that poetry is on the right track.  How has the erstwhile Queen of the Arts been consigned to the tiny corner of the cultural basement where she languishes today—and how can she get out?  As an acclaimed poet and veteran teacher of poetry, Charles Harper Webb knows what it takes for a poem to grab a reader's attention and hold on.  As a former rock singer/guitarist and a licensed psychotherapist, he understands how to connect with an audience.  A Million MFAs Are Not Enough shows—with wit and style and concrete tips that working writers can use—how poetry can return to cultural relevance again.   

About this title

About the Author:

Charles Harper Webb’s latest book, Brain Camp, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2015. A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, a book of essays on revitalizing American poetry, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2016. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations and winner of the Saltman Prize from Red Hen, Webb teaches Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.

Review:

“Publishing Charles Harper Webb’s essays in the Writer’s Chronicle is always a pleasure. His essays tackle big subjects in poetry: narrative, difficulty, energy. He is methodical in his criticism, and he has at heart the desire to elevate poetry out of the cultural basement to a prominent place in the public sphere.”

―Supriya Bhatnagar, editor of Writer’s Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1597097241
• ISBN 13: 9781597097246
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Webb Charles Harper