Great Regulars: [Elizabeth] Bishop's memoir is about the education

of a poet. It's not about the the use of poetry to educate a person. Lasky calls for poetry to be instructional for improving writing. Bishop writes about how to be a writer. Her memoir is not useful as a tool for poetry to lead to brick-and-mortar learning. Instead, Bishop's idea about learning is that you must live to become a writer, not just be a completer of writing assignments, even if those assignments are composed as poems.

from David Biespiel's Poetry Wire: The Rumpus: Dorothea Lasky v. Elizabeth Bishop

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