After a brief but torrential thunderstorm in
mid-June, eight writers of poetry and prose, myself included, huddled around a
picnic table crowded with three-buck beer and leaves of printed-out poems,
stories, and essays in the concrete garden of a Brooklyn bar. It had been
almost a year since I'd taken a seat at a table with other writers to talk
about the stuff, the meat of our writing—inspirations, obsessions,
discoveries—and the project at hand every time each of us settles in to
confront the blank page. All of us had spent an intense two years together at
the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, a small liberal arts school nestled
in woody Bronxville, north of New York City. Many of us had migrated to the
city after graduation, and while we saw one another often enough, touching base
at parties and readings, our writing lives had become privatized, with only the
most dramatic aspects—I haven't been excited by a word in three months! My
thesis is moldering!—shared among us. So, about thirteen months after
graduating, a group of friends and I, guided by our assiduous organizer, Hossannah
Asuncion, decided to create a new program in order to reestablish the
connection that the MFA experience had provided. We would get together once a month to check in
with one another, warm ourselves up with a few brief free-writes, and discuss a
predetermined topic on which we had all read a few essays before meeting. We
could also bring works-in-progress to share, though workshop-style critiquing
would not be on the agenda—our gatherings would celebrate our writing as art,
and our work as artists.
Perhaps the shocking burst of rain was an apt metaphor for the two
brief years we'd been ensconced in, and saturated by, a lively stream of words.
The way whole days of digging in to work felt like a deluge after which the
world often shone. The way words became new again in the voice of a classmate,
and how the dross would be purged by the workshop process, revealing the tender
bones and pulse of a piece. A creative writing program had offered to many of
us an ideal experience—and then it was over. Of course, a workshop-heavy
curriculum can have debilitating effects as well: Participants can tire of their
work's being scrutinized in its infancy; differences in critical approaches can
stifle discussion; and the compounded anxieties of the final semester can weigh
on relationships, especially as solitary time to write becomes precious and
staunchly defended. I'm sure the capacity for inducing this exhaustion informs
our universities' having limited the MFA track to two or three years.
After a while we're inundated and need to move out on our own. But writing
programs don't tend to teach the skill set required to work fruitfully—and
joyfully—beyond their gilt walls.
The MFA experience does not necessarily prepare us to be writers in the world. Our time as students is set apart as a
sacrosanct period during which we perform the very important work of honing and
polishing our craft, but little guidance is given as to how we might preserve
that sacred lifestyle (as well as the more profane, yet necessary, moments of
criticism and editing) once outside the bubble. On the other hand, no one could
have told us then that our devotions would flag and that distractions—such as
earning a living and making our way in the world—would threaten to prevent us
from writing altogether.
This is not to say that constant connection
to a writing community is necessary, or even entirely healthy. Once I'd successfully
cast off those workshops and conferences, a momentary sense of liberation
washed over me. When my thesis crossed over into the hands of my advisers, I
was immediately walloped by a profound exhaustion, and there was freedom in
that fatigue. I needed a break from the intensity of the MFA experience—from workshops, and even from writing. The project I had
immersed myself in for two years (at times a desperate, sinking immersion) had
worn me out, and I required some time to let the omnipresent criticism, however
sparkling or seductively constructive, settle within me. It was like recovery
after a marathon, when my legs were ripped and clunky and I needed to
cross-train for a while, to teach myself how to move again. But the respite
from writing and talking about writing soon devolved into a drab routine.
Instead of slowly starting over, I had let myself stiffen, and the loss of my
teammates—and our shared field—made the process of resuming the race
profoundly difficult.
Excuses abounded. At first, no amount of time
seemed long enough to sit and work, and when I'd attempt to write in short
spurts, the words danced only on the surface of ideas and questions. Sometimes
language simply felt inert. I often had the sense that I was playing with
plastic blocks rather than textured, living things. Some pleasure had seeped
out of the project of making art with words—a joy that I have discovered came
from sharing both my poetry and the process of writing it. While I can't say
this perception was common to all my peers, it seems that each of us has
experienced an occasion—however extended—of craving community.
“The very act of coming together on equal terms for a salon has reminded us that we are not isolated as writers.”
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