Nonfiction Alumnus Jonathan Winston Jones on the Practice of Writing and the Uses of Poetry

A few months ago, an alumna from Northwestern’s MFA in the School of Professional Studies messaged me to ask whether I saved the syllabus for the Poetry for Prose Writers course we took together 8 years prior. At the time of the message, I was in my office in the Chicago Loop, stressing over a maze of redlines on regulatory documents. As I stressed, I briefly wondered whether the syllabus was, in fact, in my presence, as though I’d held on to it, like a sacred object.

For Poetry for Prose Writers, I kept a fastidious binder overstuffed with poetry exercises and notes in the margins. My past self perhaps preserved this binder in case the future self required quick reference to the basics of iambic pentameter. As I mulled over the message from my MFA alumna friend, I wondered whether this binder from Poetry for Prose Writers could be resting inside the closeted bookcase of my office high up in a skyscraper of dark glass, a hive for a job working on national healthcare spending, a cause of undue anxiety on Saturdays in summer when one would prefer to be exercising the mind on the writing of poetry or something nearer the personal essay.

In any event, to be responsive to the original request, I looked away from the work computer monitors and out into the blue of the Lake, toward the oil refineries on the southern shore. As foreshadowed up the page, I quickly discerned the binder’s presence, discovering its neat contents, along with the course syllabus, tucked away inside my office’s bookcase closet. As I photographed the syllabus pages to send along to the MFA alumna, I recognized how poetry, with its opportunities for compression, has served me well in the development of careful presentation slides and exact talking points to be given on the fly to virtual audiences who are overworked, without much luxury for concentration. When we think of writing and the value of an MFA, one can dream of quantity, the acquisitive potential of a bestselling book or the pleasure of having one’s talent be well-recognized. All such dreams are beautiful.

For me, a writer with a smattering of published essays across the land, the practice of writing may be but a lifelong well of joy, and this could be enough. Years ago, when I started the MFA program, I told one of the program directors that this degree would be the down payment on the house I would never own, a sort of metaphysical abode.

“That’s a good investment,” the director said. “You will live in this space for the rest of your life.”

The offhand quip of my past self has become a compass, a reminder of how creative pursuits often guide the way back to feeling at home.