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From Clover, J. & Spahr, J., "The 95 Cent Skool," in Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (Univ. of Iowa Press, 2010).

Hi All,

I came across this passage in an essay by two poets envisioning an alternative way to teach poetry -- alternative to high price, classy workshops.  It struck me as related to our project:

. . . But we do mean that any Poetry Skool committed to more than niche marketing of the well-made object with its minor telltale difference (a.k.a. its logo) must begin by refusing the pay-to-play of the current tuition system, refusing the credit-baiting of the federal government student loan program, refusing a star system of highly paid professors. Those who want cachet and connections and career, those who conceive of Skool as an investment, will go elsewhere.

This is not because poetry is pure and should float above the economic systems that currently wreck the lives of so many. It is because poetry needs all the brains it can get. Our double faith is simple: one, that decreasing both barriers to entry and compulsions toward reward will get a dozen people around a table who are more committed to the particulars of that collective work. And two, that this dynamic of poetry for its own sake will not be insular and aestheticized—will be as a result not less but more open to the visible and invisible social contexts of poetry, not having had to harden itself to endure the marketplace.

It's interesting to play with substituting other words for "poetry" here: "science," "education?"  The idea of getting "a dozen people around a table who are MORE committed" than the marketplace typically allows/fosters is resonant with my experience of our group.  So is the idea that more brains are needed, as many as possible.  I like the idea that "decreasing both barriers to entry and compulsions toward reward" could create a more lively process of inquiry and creativity. 

Later in the piece, Clover and Spahr speak of poetry as a form of "counter-cognition."  I am not sure what they mean, but what I take away is the idea that we need group processes and creative processes that do more than second codes already in place, or fire together neurons already wired together. 

To my mind, this connects with a recent discussion here on Serendip about the distinction between policy and teaching, and between competition and fluidity as modes of being.  I would like to learn much more about how to be, and to conceive of being, active and efficacious in response to injustice and to distorting, restrictive social forms and at the same time utterly joyful in and for the lived moment of apprehension that others' lives and my own far exceed the moment, however wrecking it is. 

Could this be a focus for our project in times to come?