Is a Poetry Course Worth the Cash?
Can you really buy a poet's soul in six easy installments?
The algorithm knows. It knows you’ve been staring at a blank page, wondering if "luminous" is a cliché (it is) and whether you can rhyme "existential dread" with "breakfast bread" (you can, but please don't). And so, it serves you the ad: “Unlock Your Inner Poet! A Six-Week Workshop to Find Your Authentic Voice.” The price tag would cover a month's rent in a slightly less damp garret than the one you romantically imagine yourself starving in.
This raises the eternal question that haunts every aspiring writer: Can a course actually make you a poet? Is it worth paying for something so notoriously unlucrative?
Let's be clear about what you're buying. You are not buying a muse. She is not for sale and has a notoriously fickle returns policy. What you are buying is structure, accountability, and tools.
A good poetry course is a bootcamp for technique. It will force you to finally learn the difference between enjambment and caesura. It will make you write a villanelle, and you will hate it, but you will emerge understanding constraint. It provides deadlines, which are, for many of us, the only force in the universe stronger than procrastination.
Most importantly, it provides an audience beyond your housecat, who, while supportive, offers limited critical feedback. A workshop forces you to read your darlings aloud and watch the pained, confused expressions on your classmates' faces. This is invaluable. It’s how you learn that the devastatingly beautiful line you wrote in a fit of inspiration is, in fact, completely incomprehensible to other human beings.
But here’s the rub. Can a course teach you to have something to say? No. Can it instill in you the specific weirdness, the unique filter through which you see the world? Absolutely not. In fact, a bad workshop can do the opposite. It can act as a great homogenizer, sanding down your interesting, spiky edges until your work sounds like a "workshop poem"……….competent, clean, and utterly forgettable.
The truth is, a course can make you a better technician. It can give you a bigger, more sophisticated toolbox. It cannot, however, teach you how to feel, how to observe, or how to bleed onto a page. That part, the "genius" part, is cultivated in solitude, through relentless reading, through living, and through paying attention to the world in a way that is inconvenient and often painful.
The Verdict: A poetry course is like hiring a personal trainer for your writing. They can teach you the proper form, push you to do the reps, and stop you from injuring yourself with a misplaced metaphor. But you still have to lift the weights.
So, is it worth it? If you have the money and crave structure and community, yes. It can accelerate your understanding of craft by years. If you're broke, buy a book of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and a good anthology. It’s a slower, lonelier path, but the destination is the same. You can't buy the fire, but you can certainly learn how to build a better fireplace.
Have you ever taken a poetry course? Was it a revelation or a racket? Share your confessions in the comments.
Sorry…will continue that thought. Steve Kowit was both a fine poet and teacher. He was also an enthusiastic promoter of new writers. He set guidelines in his workshops that made for useful input and new tools. In both San Diego and the SF Bay Area, there once was plentiful opportunities to hear and share poetry, to workshop with accomplished people. Coffee houses, bookstores and libraries have staged some good opportunities for exposure and learning. Universities and Adult ed programs made some good tools accessible. More than once, I learned that getting an “A” involved some mastery of the teacher’s preferred form and style.
Steve Kowit