With these words, written long before his Iowa Writers' Workshop became world famous, much imitated, and academically rich, Paul Engle captured the spirit behind his beloved workshop. Now, in this collection of essays by and about those writers who shared the energetic early years, Robert Dana presents a dynamic, informative tribute to Engle and his world. The book's three sections mingle myth and history with style and grace and no small amount of humor. The beginning essays are given over to memories of Paul Engle in his heyday. The second group focuses particularly on those teachers—Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Kurt Vonnegut, for example—who made the workshop hum on a day-to-day basis. Finally, the third section is devoted to storytelling: tall tales, vignettes, surprises, sober and not-so-sober moments. Engle's own essay, "The Writer and the Place," describes his "simple, and yet how reckless" conviction that "the creative imagination in all of the arts is as important, as congenial, and as necessary, as the historical study of all the arts." Today, of course, there are hundreds of writers' workshops, many of them founded and directed by graduates of the original Iowa workshop. But when Paul Engle arrived in Iowa there were exactly two. His indomitable nature and great persuasive powers, combined with his distinguished reputation as a poet, loomed large behind the enhancement of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. This volume of fine and witty essays reveals the enthusiasm and drive and sheer pleasure that went into Iowa's renowned workshop. 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 A collection of essays by 30 of the leading authors who participated in the early years of Americas foremost literary breeding ground, the Iowa Writers Workshop. Edited by poet and Iowa graduate Dana (Against the Grain, 1986, etc.), this is a tribute to the workshops founder, Paul Engle. In the 50s, Engle brought Karl Shapiro, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and other teacher-writers to the program, when it was little more than a few steel barracks on a remote campus. A Rhodes scholar and acclaimed poet, Engle practically invented the writing workshop. Poet Donald Justice, who studied and taught at Iowa, writes of how Engle lured him to that ``Midwestern wasteland'' and Berryman broke his arm when he fell in a rickety apartment there. Although other Iowa students disagree, Justice insists that Lowell did not seem able to summon up much interest in student work. Poet Constance Urdang describes what it was like to be one of the few women in the program in the 50s; even then, most of the fiction teachers were female but poetry classes were dominated by the likes of Robert Bly, Philip Levine, and foreign writers. Bly notes the competition in class, where hed release a snake from a sack when the criticism got too cruel. Visiting lecturers included William Carlos Williams (I write in American, not in English!), Flannery OConnor (who shocked a student with her Roman Catholic belief in damnation), and Dylan Thomas, whose penchant for beer, women, and melodious oratory shook up Iowa City. Engle bristled at the term ``cornfield poets'' and had his writers fire