Lily Allen

Have you discovered Lily Allen? If not, please do. Lily Allen: pop music = Anne Boyer: poetry.

Flarf and Kitsch

I did a couple of class sessions at the end of the (now blessedly concluded) semester on K. Silem Mohammad's work, and Flarf more generally; it dawned on me (duh) that the way to understand much of Flarf is as Deliberate Kitsch. So, yes, it is the poetic equivalent of Jeff Koons (my answer to the quiz, btw, was "all of the above"). Or maybe Kasey should trademark the epithet "Poet of Light." I don't know.

But I went to the OED for help explaining kitsch to my students. "To affect with sentimentality and vulgarity" - good. Then a bit from the Observer, 1958: "What is so extraordinary about some of these kitsch masterpieces is the way they can be enjoyed on two planes, both as themselves and as their own parodies." Uh-hhhhhhh.

Or this, from This Magazine (which magazine? . . . never heard of it), 1994: "She's playing with a look that is so out it's in, revelling in the kitschiness of the way some people, other people, dress. This isn't a case of fashion nostalgia. This is fashion slumming."

"A Note of Appreciation from the Rich"

From the good folks at Scroogle (home of the "Scroogle Scraper" - All the results - with none of the cookies!):

"Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery. On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening — instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "N[-----]s," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself. So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" — without even knowing it!"

Plu$ La Ch-Change

"Something must be done to save the American banking system, and the bankers were not doing it; the spirit of the day was sauve qui peut. . . . in America, as in other parts of the world, the economic system had now become so complex and interdependent that the possible consequences of widespread bankruptcy - to the banks, the inssurance companies, the great holding-company systems, and the multitutdes of people dependent upon them - had become too appalling to contemplate. . . . [the President] was driven to the point of intervening to protect the debt structure - first by easing temporarily the pressure of international debts without canceling them, and second by buttressing the banks and big corporations with Federal funds.

"Thus a theoretically flexible economic structure became rigid at a vital point. The debt burden remained almost undiminished. Bowing under the weight of debt - and other rigid costs - business thereupon slowed still further. As it slowed, it discharged workers or put them on reduced hours, thereby reducing purchasing power and intensifying the crisis.

". . . It is . . . useless to ask whether Hoover was acting with a tory heartlessness in permitting financial executives to come to Washington for a corporate dole when men and women on the edge of starvation were denied a personal dole. What is certain is that at the time of such widespread suffereing no democratic government could seem to be aiding the financiers and seem to be simultaneously disregarding the plight of its humbler citizens without losing the confidence of the public. . . . How could they endorse a government which gave them - for all they could see - not bread, but a stone?"

- Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The Nineteen-Thirties in America (1940)

Skeptical about *Flarf*??

Recently, a well-known blogger and poet implied that I'm skeptical about Flarf (or is it flarf?). Now, I'm skeptical about a lot of things, it's true. But how would one go about being skeptical of Flarf (or flarf)? "Wait a minute - how do I know that chicken even crossed the road? . . . "

Flarf Is . . .

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of all this debate about Flarf, Flarfistas, Flarfism, etc. How many years has this been going on? So, please, let's settle this once and for all, in the good populist (flarifistic?) way: by taking a poll.

Flarf is . . .
(choose one):

a.) garden-variety "found poetry"

b.) the greatest school of satirical verse since at least the 1740s

c.) to poetry what Jeff Koons is to sculpture

d.) making fun of the rubes

e.) the future

f.) nostalgia for the present

g.) garden-variety camp

h.) scrambling corporate internets

i.) sponsored by Google ™

j.) a smile for literate people in the post-literate age

k.) all of the above.

If there are any results, they will be posted at this site.

from "Joe's Marginalia"

some later Rae Armantrout

deviance -
blues songs

poetics of questions -
necessarily open-ended

singularity v. universality

but Narcissus - Narcissus -
didn't notice!

(her) (like Echo?)

(so as to avoid originality)

I can't help thinking
of my toyota, here -

self-absorption is bothered
by imitation?

*

Is this "cerebral" poetry =
compared to Notley - ?
(cerebral palsy)

creepy -

flash of perception -

*

or see

- to Hades? or earth?

insincerity of particulars?

transcendence

(things as they are)

*

all else

e.g., the dead - false syllogisms
empty - (potentiality)

(of what?)

*

- hmmm . . .

*

every poem a world-view

a connoisseur of vacancies - good description of her - title
for a biography?

(or lines)

who? - She
her?
(not "narratives")

breaks up
in the middle distance

like
these
poems?

*

electrical
pole/ wires

(the circumstance's
word is gone)

*

the late work - hers?

right? schtick
another form
of perform

*

the other - the third
who walks beside you

(in memory)

(a tough audience!)

*

(sameness does)

deja-vu

to? -

*

engines - vice boxes [here I meant "voice"] - or
syrinxes

(which it has, in speaking a
word)

(thtat's what words are, after all)

the "managed poem"

(im-)

*

Larry Eigner

I really like Larry Eigner. Seems like my students got into him a little, too, this past week - at least they got the general sense of what his poems are doing - what his concerns are, and how the form of his poems reflects that. The poems (esp. from the 70s on) feel light and at the same time "architectural" - you're aware of the white space, but you're also aware of the material effort with which the words are accomplished.

I'll never forget when his poem "Again, Dawn" was inscribed in 3-ft.-high letters on the outside walls of the University Art Museum at Berkeley. Each of the (many) walls represented an individual line, with the corners being the line breaks. So the materiality of the language was emphasized, as was (if you read the whole thing) the temporal and physical act of moving through the poem. If anyone has photos of that, I'd love to get copies for my class.

I had the pleasure of hearing him read a couple of times - with Jack Foley as his "interpreter." He was definitely a "presence."

This is all ye need to know on earth, or do, when it comes to poetry, anyway.

A Poem a Day (read, that is)

Last April I wrote a "poem" a day. This April, I'm doing well to read a poem a day. Which makes me think that maybe that's the way it should be. I mean, if we want to talk about slow poetry, let's talk consumption. How many times do you actually spend a sizeable chunk of time with only one poem (or section of a long poem)? I think most of us who even bother with such things typically breeze through multiple books, journals, reviews, blogs, etc. a week, or even a day. For those of us who are in the academic or publishing industries (or wanna be), it's something akin to literary speed-up. At the same time, however, the only occasions on which I've really "sat" with a poem lately have been in class.

What the hell is the point of speed-reading poetry? Or said another way, if the point is to speed read poetry, then what the hell good is it?

I'm not talking well-wrought-urn crap. Even if it's poetry that's flip and jokey, timing is everything.

Perhaps, as we continue to transition into a post-literatre society, school study of "literature" will take the form of memorization, coupled with performance (as it has at most times in most cultures). Now that would slow us down, alright.