September 1994 Cover Image

An Address to New MFA Students: Now What Have You Done?

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Ron Carlson
This room is full of people from all over the world who have—for various reasons—decided to study creative writing in a university program. Look around. Now what have you done? Who are these people and why are they here? Are they here for the same reason you are? Are their motives yours? What is it they all think about writing? What do they think might be achieved or attained or obtained in four, five, or even eight semesters here in school?
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An Interview with Mary Oliver

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Renee Olander
In a publishing career now spanning thirty years, Mary Oliver has published nine volumes of poetry, including two chapbooks. Her tenth volume of poems, White Pine, is forthcoming this year. Her book on the craft of writing poetry, A Poetry Handbook, was published by Harcourt Brace last spring. In 1992, Oliver's New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award; House of Light won both the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship Award in 1991; a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry followed the publication of American Primitive in 1984.

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Teaching Literature and Writing in Our Nation's Inner Cities—

Janet Heller
In June 1994, the Clinton administration announced funding for WritersCorps, a new literary arts project which is part of the national community service initiative called AmeriCorps. Beginning in September 1994, WritersCorps will provide 60 volunteer jobs for writers who desire to work and teach in urban communities; the service will provide the volunteers with stipends and educational awards to finance their higher education or to repay college loans.
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The Move to George Mason University—

AWP Editor
On the weekend of July 4, 1994, the national headquarters o f the Associated Writing Programs moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The new offices are twenty miles from downtown Washington, D.C. AWP's headquarters were formerly located at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, AWP's address since 1978.
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poet-l@lsuvm: The Virtual Poetry Workshop

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Rodger Kamenetz
During the past three years, while researching a nonfiction book about rabbis in dialogue with the Dalai Lama, I've entered the Bitnet zone—the electronic nousphere—where knowledge, dialogue, gossip, facts and "flames" (outrageous postings) circle perpetually at close to the speed of light. Is it hell or heaven, so much information, debate and dialogue at your fingertips? Both.
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An excerpt from The Gutenberg Elegies:

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Sven Birkerts
Back in the romantic days of Hollywood hype, there was a film—no, a movie—called Young-blood Hawke. It was based on a novel of that name by Herman Wouk, which was in turn loosely based on the story of Thomas Wolfe, that prolific colossus of pre-war American fiction. James Franciscus played the eponymous Hawke with the kind of tight intensity that was then—his was in 1964—in vogue.
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