1. Much to say here, including the fact that the de-politicization of US poetry started happening even earlier, after WWI, & ramped up after WWII. Much early 20th C US poetry (esp by social realist writers) was highly critical of the US, but it was anti-Communist sentiment after https://twitter.com/viet_t_nguyen/status/1341339858132865026

2. WWII that led to a white-washing of this poetry in favor of "U.S. liberal" and economic values that were supposedly espoused also in writing workshops, which would then promote these political values via its art. (See WORKSHOPS OF EMPIRE, Eric Bennett). The writing workshop

3. has always been an implicitly politicized space, since these workshops proliferated after WWII and the GI Bill, which flooded universities with new students and potential revenue via veterans. Writing workshops were, in part, designed then around capitalizing on

4. these students, and giving veterans a space to write also about their war experiences. Considering the bulk of US writers today come out of workshops, we could ask another question about writing and politics: was the "apolitical writer" actually EVER apolitical?

5. Not knowing about the CW workshop history and its politics is of course not the same as being innocent of them. And writing and teaching within this profession is, implicitly, to also participate in a politicized mindset: what (historical) political, economic

6. and cultural values do we promote via lessons like "write what you know," "show don't tell," "avoid adverbs," "write clear sentences," etc. Also, what values are we promoting when we urge young writers towards book deals at publishing houses that have consolidated

7. (or just congealed) into one big corporate firm? How can we preserve/promote an authentic activist literature that meaningfully critiques and resists the political and economic systems that simultaneously reward it? And then congratulates itself FOR rewarding it?

8. I suspect the answer to these is always a formal one within the art itself: art which resists easily digestible and thus reproducible "meaning"--even easily understood political meaning--because it understands that mass consumption turns, inevitably, into kitsch expression

9. of political or social values, making them both more sympathetic and more anodyne. Basically, how often do we congratulate ourselves (as readers) for reading the poem or story that expresses values that we can agree with but never have to export into our own lives?

10. How often do we turn to literature and the workshop itself as a form of psychic activism? And, by doing this, lower both the expectation of what we might achieve through activism, and what we hope to formally create through literature?

11. I guess, for me, the question is always the same: is my own political commitment/resistance best expressed/enacted via my subject matter (what I say), in my form (how I say), or via my teaching and publishing record (who pays me to say)? Are these false distinctions?

12. I suspect they are all false distinctions, largely because of the end line of this op-ed: "Someone get this person a book deal." In the end, no matter how you resist and critique in language, you participate in economies with inbuilt class and race-based hierarchies

13. you cannot control, and do not always recognize. The market, however, and the workshop can turn anything into a good product and, in that, all resistance can be monetized.