A rebuttal to the Ryan Boudinot MFA article.

There are over 100 comments about Ryan Boudinot's article on THE STRANGER site--which I excerpted for my last blog post.

Here's one from "emmaz" and I've highlighted a certain passage that perfectly summarizes what I've been trying to say for years about "the poetry community."

The irony of this article is that Boudinot seems to genuinely think that he's courageously speaking a truth that no one wants to hear, when he's actually just spouting the dominant ideology that has held sway for a few hundred years now about the arts. That old saw that creativity is best left to a few genius artists who are "born that way," and if most of the celebrated voices are white and male, then that is just an indication of how God distributes talent. That's a western enlightenment attitude that supports the ruling class and the hegemonic status quo. I personally think that the more people who engage in the arts, in any capacity, the better the arts will be and the more interesting and just our culture will be. Why would we ever want to encourage less participation, if not to police who gets to speak?