Amazon.com Review
A Community of Writers is an utterly engaging tribute to the early, Paul Engle days of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Iowa's first creative writing course was offered as early as 1896, and Norman Foerster gave Iowa's creative writing program a push in the 1930s. But it was Paul Engle, who took over the workshop in 1943, "with his indefatigable drive, entrepreneurial skill, and boyish enthusiasm," John C. Gerber writes here, "who brought the workshop its fame and international attention." Creative writing, says Philip Levine, is "one of the most amazing growth industries we have," but in those days, there was just Iowa. And Iowa was Paul Engle, some corrugated steel barracks (miserable in the heat, deafening during a rainstorm), and an ever-changing cast of exceptionally talented writers.
For A Community of Writers, 30 writers--including Donald Justice, Robert Bly, Marvin Bell, and Bharati Mukherjee--bring to life Engle, the other instructors, and some rollicking good (and bad) times in Iowa City. While W. D. Snodgrass claims that "almost no one was disappointed by [Robert] Lowell's teaching," Levine claims that "to say I was disappointed in Lowell as a teacher is an understatement.... A teacher who is visibly bored by his students and their poems is hard to admire"; especially when those students included two future Pulitzer Prize winners, one Yale winner, one National Book Critics Circle Award winner, three Lamont Prize winners, and one America Book Award winner. Lowell, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Dylan Thomas, and many other extraordinary writers-instructors weave their way in and out of these stories, but none so much as Engle. "Paul Engle should get a posthumous medal from the Coast Guard for all the lives he saved," says Kurt Vonnegut. "No writer in all of history did as much to help other writers." --Jane Steinberg
From Publishers Weekly
Through the recollections of graduates and teachers, this book recalls the early years of the fabled Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Paul Engle, the program's charismatic founder and director, was uncompromising in his efforts to help writers along, stocking the teaching faculty with luminaries while trolling America for the most promising young writers, for whom he arranged generous fellowships. Engle was also a social force. R.V. Cassill recalls an oyster feast thrown for the students: "No one can underestimate how much drunkenness there was in those days nor how much Paul incited it, because it was certainly not liquor alone that made us drunk." But Engle could be uncompromisingly harsh, too: Kiyohiro Miura recounts Engle urging him, about a review of Kenneth Rexroth's translations, "Make it tough. That's our way." W.D. Snodgrass recalls suddenly falling out of Engle's favor and having his fellowship cut off without warning. And there were other problems: the geniuses brought in to teach were all deeply troubledA"a whole generation of gifted but dangerously driven poets," in Snodgrass's words. Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Randall Jarrell all left indelible marks on their gifted students. But between all the excesses of drunkenness and meannessAremembered here in absorbing detailAtheir generosity and dedication also emerge. Philip Levine recalls: "Berryman never failed in his obligations as a teacher... he brought to our writing a depth of insight and care we did not know existed." Legions of imitator workshops mark the impact of Engle's endeavor. But his fondest hope was that his workshop would be a "community." These poetic memoirs confirm his success.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
