"I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry"
About this Quote
Robert Morgan points a finger at the professional machinery that now surrounds poetry in America. By the creative writing industry he means the network of MFA programs, workshops, residencies, conferences, prizes, and journals that trains and certifies poets, and often employs them. His skepticism is not a rejection of craft but a worry about what happens when art becomes a credentialed career path with its own ladders and safe harbors.
The system can standardize taste. Workshop cultures tend to reward polish, consensus, and a certain portable voice that travels well from classroom to journal. Risk, eccentricity, and local idioms may be sanded down. Poets learn how to build a CV and navigate gatekeepers, which can tilt ambition toward what is publishable rather than what is necessary. Meanwhile the audience for poetry outside the academy has not grown in proportion to the number of trained poets, so poems often speak more to insiders than to a broad public.
Morgan’s position carries a special irony and authority. An Appalachian-born poet and novelist who has also taught in university programs for decades, he inhabits both the folk and institutional traditions. His work draws on oral storytelling, landscape, and memory, and he values poetry that reaches beyond the seminar room. From that vantage, the industry’s professionalization can look like a narrowing of purpose: poetry becomes a product of workshops rather than of lived experience, and the vocation becomes a job.
None of this denies the real gains the system has brought—community, mentorship, support for marginalized voices, and space to write. Morgan’s claim is ultimately a call for recalibration. Institutions should be tools, not masters. American poetry thrives when it is porous to the world, audacious in form and speech, and accountable to readers who do not need a syllabus to enter it.
The system can standardize taste. Workshop cultures tend to reward polish, consensus, and a certain portable voice that travels well from classroom to journal. Risk, eccentricity, and local idioms may be sanded down. Poets learn how to build a CV and navigate gatekeepers, which can tilt ambition toward what is publishable rather than what is necessary. Meanwhile the audience for poetry outside the academy has not grown in proportion to the number of trained poets, so poems often speak more to insiders than to a broad public.
Morgan’s position carries a special irony and authority. An Appalachian-born poet and novelist who has also taught in university programs for decades, he inhabits both the folk and institutional traditions. His work draws on oral storytelling, landscape, and memory, and he values poetry that reaches beyond the seminar room. From that vantage, the industry’s professionalization can look like a narrowing of purpose: poetry becomes a product of workshops rather than of lived experience, and the vocation becomes a job.
None of this denies the real gains the system has brought—community, mentorship, support for marginalized voices, and space to write. Morgan’s claim is ultimately a call for recalibration. Institutions should be tools, not masters. American poetry thrives when it is porous to the world, audacious in form and speech, and accountable to readers who do not need a syllabus to enter it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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