How that Magic really worked: on Duncan & Spicer

The "Poetry as Magic" workshop questionnaire is hilarious, and because it is so damn funny its easy to take it lightly, that Duncan and Spicer admitted that much of the questionnaire is a farse, that selection in the workshop had little to do with the questionnaire itself (this according to Elka, I know nothing about this...). But with that, I do think it could be a sort of indicator--while good answers don't guarantee that one can write decent poetry, I bet that bad answers nearly promise bad poetry, in that one cannot think on ones feet, that one cannot answer a question creatively, or that one does not know the references. (I am not here implying that these references are the be-all-end-all of poetic knowledge or that a different set of references wouldn't suffice just as well, being well aware that this specific set of references could easily be construed as exclusionary, the clique that Emily mentioned made her feel like such an outsider). But yes, I think the questions can be taken more seriously than at first glance. And it's great to see some poets having fun (whereas Pound, Eliot, & co. nearly always seems to have so much seriousness about).

A few questions I found particularly "serious," in that they could convey insight into someone's poetics:

What is your favorite political song? An easier way of asking, are you swinging right or left. Lets face it, conservative poetry and liberal/leftist poetry is quite different.

Which of these figures had or represented religious views nearest to you own religious views? For me the also read as a history test, in making sure that I knew in the first place what these people stood for, or even who they were. They next set was even more difficult.

Write a paragraph about how the fall of Rome affected poetry. I would assume that nearly every answer would be intentionally absurd. Or even that knowing about the actual state of Roman poetics at the time wouldn't necessarily give one bonus points.

editing a magazine w/an unlimited budget. An obvious question of poetic preferences and knowledge of contemporaries.