Children should be taught how to write from, say, first grade through junior high school. After that, teaching should focus solely on how to read.

Poetry is for dilettantes and amateurs, sorry. Others need not apply.

...but a much more important factor influencing the state of criticism : the rise of the MFA program.

I've deleted the MOST ridiculous of yesterday's 3 posts.

There are diverse kinds of poetry & diverse audiences. We have to move beyond the team-sport mentality, whether coming from formalists or experimentalists. Though I relished Joan Houlihan's take-no-prisoners, Emperor-has-no-clothes, take-the-naked-Emperor-prisoner style. Feeds my mean streak, I guess.

& we don't want to spend all day in the workshop, memorizing the list of tools.

I'm in favor of something like Montale's notion of dilettantismo (in maybe his first essay on poetry) - (if I'm remembering it right!). Best to think of poetry as a part of general culture, and try to be modest & circumspect about theory, means, methodologies... let the general audience make what it will of what is offered. (But will Henry take his own advice??? Noooo....)