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The last
thirty years have seen an extraordinary proliferation of
creative writing classes and programs in the United States,
most of them associated with universities and many directed
to dubious ends. For unfortunately, in the twentieth century
much of the writer’s craft has been intentionally demeaned
or destroyed by excessive experimentation and literary
faddism. This is especially clear in the case of poetry
where a fundamental, underlying aspect of the art—its
metrical base—has been attacked and abandoned by most of the
century’s poets. William Butler Yeats, who retained the
metric in his verse, once said of Ezra Pound (the leader of
the revolt against meter) that he “spoils himself by too
many experiments.” Sadly enough, those experiments
eventually became the modus operandi of most
twentieth century poets. As a result, the underlying,
accentual-syllabic metrical rhythm of poetry, which
dominated all English-language poetry from Chaucer to Frost,
was cavalierly abandoned, and a crucial aspect of the
writer’s craft was missing in subsequent poetry. The great
poets of the twentieth century like Yeats, Hardy, Frost,
Robinson, and Auden all resisted the temptation to write
free (non-metrical) verse, but the majority of poets chose
to follow in Pound’s footsteps. But if all these poets, who
are also the teachers of creative writing, have no interest
in meter, how can they possibly teach the fundamentals of
the craft to their apprentices in the classroom? Obviously
they don’t—and in many cases they can’t.
Similar
problems have occurred in twentieth century fiction and
dramatic writing but not at such a fundamental level;
nevertheless, both modes of writing have been damaged by the
century’s immature need to be, at all costs, somehow
radically innovative. As a result, all of these modes of
writing are now far less popular than they used to be. Of
course, there are many other reasons for the decline of
serious reading: especially the attractions of film, radio,
and television, as well as the “dumbing-down” of American
youth by the schools. Yet why do even people who do
love the literature of the past find so little to enjoy and
appreciate in contemporary writing? Much has been written
about this subject, but I would suggest two reasons that
relate specifically to a comment once made by W. H. Auden:
Speaking for myself, the questions which interest me most
when reading a poem are two. The first is technical: “Here
is a verbal contraption. How does it work? The second is, in
the broadest sense, moral: What kind of guy inhabits this
poem? What is his notion of the good life or the good place?
His notion of the Evil One?
Auden was
one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century, but
here he taps into the fundamental responses of even the most
unsophisticated reader. Every “ordinary” poetry reader might
not care to know exactly how a poem is constructed (although
every reader who aspires to be a writer should), but he
definitely wants the satisfaction that comes from
encountering something that is well-made—well-crafted. He
also wants (though writers continually ignore this fact) to
have a sense of moral commiseration with the writer, and he
certainly doesn’t like to be addressed from a moral vacuum.
If contemporary teachers of creative writing do not raise
the latter issue and teach the former, then they are clearly
failing in their task.
Pound was
wrong about most things, but he was right when he declared
that “A poem must sound.” Verse is unique in that its
readers demand a pleasing or appropriate sonic quality to
the work. For hundreds of years this has come primarily from
the accentual metric base of our unique language and poetry.
Thus English-language poets have generally written in a
rising iambic meter (that is, an unaccented syllable
followed by an accented syllable—short, then long). Most of
Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are written in an
unrhymed, five-beat (pentameter) iambic line: “But sóft!
what líght through yónder wíndow bréaks? It ís the eást, and
Júliet ís the sún!” There are of course countless variations
which poets use within this metrical system (as in
Shakespeare’s extra light syllable in the word “Juliet”),
and any serious, aspiring poet needs to be made aware of
these things. There are also many other sound devices
(rhyme, repetition, alliteration) which the student needs to
learn and work with, and the student should likewise be
encouraged to attempt poems in all the various stanzaic
formats (couplets, trimeters, ballads, terza rima, sonnets,
ottava rima, the French forms), and to understand and use
the traditional figures of speech. If an aspiring poet reads
Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and doesn’t know it’s
written in terza rima, then he knows very little about
poetry—hopefully the apprentice mechanic at the local garage
will be able to tell a four-cylinder engine from a
six-cylinder engine and know the different construction and
capability of each.
Although
the experimental fiction of the twentieth century violated
the traditional usages of grammar, structure, syntax,
perspective (and more), there was no lasting, fundamental
damage done to that genre as there was with poetry. The
problems arising in today’s contemporary fiction writing
classes are rather the detrimental emphases that have
resulted from the widespread impact of certain faddish
literary movements, especially Meta-fiction and Minimalism,
both of which denigrated the role of plot in fiction.
Everyone knows that character is extremely important in
fiction (though far less so in the short story), and it is,
in truth, very easy to talk about in the classroom. Just as
poetry teachers tend to spend all their time talking about
what the poem “means” (which is a lot easier than discussing
how it’s constructed), most fiction teachers spend their
time discussing character and consciously ignore the much
more difficult subject of plot. Yet in all great fiction,
plot is just as important as character: Hester Prynne, Ahab,
Raskolnikov, and Thomas Sulpen are only as interesting as
the plots that envelop them.
The other
primary problem in contemporary fiction writing classes is
also a result of the Minimalism fad: the lack of
imagination. Dull stories are nothing more than dull
stories, and the best of the world’s fiction has always been
about things that were truly amazing, often startling: a
scarlet letter, a murderous white whale, a theory-murder, or
Southern miscegenation and parricide. Admittedly, teaching
students to exercise their imaginations is often very
difficult, but they must be encouraged to do so, or an
endless glut of dull, uninteresting, and unread stories will
result.
Four
years ago at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Arthur Miller,
America’s foremost dramatist, was asked what advice he had
for aspiring playwrights. He responded, “Structure,
structure, and structure.”
Unfortunately, even though the twentieth century revolt
against the well-made play has resulted in an endless stream
of poorly made plays, Mr. Miller’s advice is not generally
followed in most contemporary playwriting classes. The
recent disappearance of the Broadway drama due to financial
considerations and the related limitations on sets and
actors—even in the regional theaters—has already greatly
inhibited the contemporary dramatist. But the
well-structured play with vibrant characters and an
interesting, striking story is still in demand.
As an
aside, an aspiring writer should examine his own motives.
Anyone who has taught creative writing courses over the past
few years knows that far too many people pursue a writing
“career” for all the wrong reasons. Writing can’t compensate
for spiritual vacuity. It isn’t therapy, and it isn’t just a
means of “having your say.” Auden once pointed out that if a
student came to him and said, “I have to write poetry
because I have something important to say,” he had little
hope for that person. But if another person told him that he
wanted to be a poet because he “loved words,” then Auden was
optimistic. The same could be said of fiction and drama: if
someone has a powerful impulse to tell interesting and
meaningful stories, then he’s clearly on the right track. It
was the same impulse that motivated Shakespeare and Poe and
Melville and Faulkner and Miller.
Finally,
it’s important to state the obvious fact that nothing
meaningful can come from a vacuum. All significant literary
writers were voracious readers who fully understood the
seminal texts in their culture. It’s just as important to
know the Bible, the Greeks, Augustine and Aquinas, as it is
to know the great literary masters, and every teacher of
creative writing should continually encourage students to
undertake a wide reading of the key documents in their
culture. As John Updike once said, “Writers have to know
something! They ought to study languages, and history, and
philosophy and geology. They ought to know what the earth
they are standing on is made of.” And when they do, then
they can begin to employ the various tools of their
craft—like meter, rhyme, plot, and structure—and attempt to
follow in the time-proven tradition of the masters.
There can
be no substitute for reading and studying the literary
masters, but regarding poetry, there are two excellent books
that can help the aspiring poet comprehend the complexities
of poetic construction: A Prosody Handbook by Karl
Shapiro and Robert Beum, 1965, and Poetic Meter and
Poetic Form by Paul Fussell, Jr., 1965. I know of no
comparable works relating to fiction, but John Gardner’s
The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers,
1983, is very helpful. As for dramatic writing, many
students still find Lajos Egri’s classic text, The Art of
Dramatic Writing, 1946, very useful, and, in
screenwriting, Syd Field’s simple, straightforward
Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, 1979, can
also offer some helpful guidance.
William Baer is Professor of Poetry and
Creative Writing at Evansville University. His poems, “The
Playwright of the People,” and “The Philosopher of Action,”
appeared in Volume 4, Number 3 of
ART Ideas.
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