BU Creative Writing

In his new book, Laureates and Heretics: Six Careers in American Poetry,Robert Archambeau "examines the influence of the poet and critic Yvor Winters on his final generation of graduate students at Stanford in the early 1960s: Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, James McMichael, John Matthias, and John Peck. Archambeau divides the poets into two groups, laureates and heretics. Hass and Pinsky, each of whom served multiple terms as United States Poet Laureate, achieved both popular recognition and institutional renown. In contrast, the poetic accomplishments of Matthias, McMichael, and Peck (and to some extent Winters himself), the 'heretics', have not resulted in wide readership or institutional canonization. Archambeau begins with the context of the modernist poetics Winters first espoused and then rejected. The story that follows - of how his five most prominent students accepted, rejected, or transformed Winters' poetics, and how these poets went on to greater or lesser degrees of success in the field of late twentieth-century letters - illuminates the cultural politics of poetry in our own day. The author provides close readings of poems by this diverse group of poets, places their careers and works in the context of their times, and traces the relationship between American literary history and American canons of literary taste from the 1930s to the present day."

the cover of Laureates and Heretics

"We are advocating and helping to create a broad, vital literary culture,” said Rosanna Warren, a former president and founding member [and member of the Creative Writing faculty]. “We are trying to connect lovers of literature inside the academy and outside the academy."

The Association's respected magazine, Literary Imagination, has often featured the work of BU authors. Even this current issue includes an article by Sven Birkerts, editor of AGNI, and a poem by one of the current MFA candidates.

Another highlight of that issue is the bundle of new extracts from The Greek Anthology, Book XVII by Greg Delanty. In the Fall 2009 edition, author R. H. Winnick laid out his case for the identity of the "Fair Friend" addressed in Shakespeare's sonnets. His argument is well worth examining closely.

Just as the magazine is a meeting place for literary ideas, the Association's local meetings are a gathering place for literary people. There are often local meetings held right here on the BU campus; the Association maintains a list of forthcoming events online. The rate for joining the Association as a student member (grad or undergrad) is $32, and comes with a subscription to the group's various publications as well as an invitation to all their events.