Literary agents love writers who teach creative writing. Look at the author biography on any piece of fiction and you're likely to find a writer who is a professor at some university, teaching others how to write just as well so they, too, can get published.
It's the teaching bit that gets a bit convoluted at times, when the professors exit their ivory towers and venture into the real world.
Denise Duhamel of Florida International University went up to the Bronx to teach a class about poetry to a group of second level students.
That was likely her first mistake, in thinking that teens filled with raging hormones and immature brain wiring would be able to handle a lesson that is suitable for twenty-one-year old MFA candidates.
Along with a colleague, she read words from index cards, and showed the students how a poem might be created. Just words. So harmless. So charming. So charged with meaning.
The teaching team used anti-black and anti-gay words, perhaps to make a point about the power of words. Instead, they gave the students permission to be derogatory and insulting, and the wee little ones took off running through the world of poetry. They, too, took up the cards and created their poems that hurled thunderbolts at the diverse student body for a full thirty minutes.
David Schiller, headmaster, has been using every word at his disposal to apologize for the ensuing debacle. The students are trying to deal with their own involvement, especially those who went along with the mob and read out words that made them uncomfortable, words they knew were insulting to their peers.
Instead of a poetry slam, Ms. Duhamel unleashed a stream of profanity and hate speech, and she truly had no idea it was coming.
Such a bruising introduction to the real world, beyond the lush confines of a Florida college campus. Perhaps it's best to keep them confined in their ivory tower where they can't get into so much mischief.
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