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.

Obama v. Roosevelt

The comparison is inevitable. So how does Bo stack up against FDR? Here is Daniel Schorr's analysis (Schorr was reporting during both administrations). Also, compare Bo's press conference and "internet address" to Roosevelt's inveighing against "malefactors of great wealth" and "economic royalists" (the latter includes a downloadable MP3 recording).

Poor folks trusted Roosevelt - even though his accent was kinda funny-sounding, he exuded reassurance. Not only did he "feel their pain," he gave them jobs. And he really did tax the rich and spread the wealth. People wrote him letters fully believing he would personally read them (and he did, some of them).

Nowadays, I feel like "my voice" "counts for more" on a blog than in a "letter to my elected representatives." It seems as though politicians are more afraid of this amorphous force called the "blogosphere" than they are of the rather more (statistically) tangible entity called the "elecorate." It's Growing Bigger Every Day, after all - and "blog" sounds a little like "Blob," don't you think?

Moreover ("moreover"?), I've about come to the conclusion that corporations are more sensitive to political pressure than are politicians. For the former, it's a matter of dollar and cents. For the latter, well, their dollars and cents come from the former. Yelling at a politician to change things makes about as much sense as yelling at the receptionist to give you your job back.

The Rejection of Rejection Slips

Is it just my imagination, or is the Rejection Slip an institution that is going by the boards? There are journals who send them out, of course – and some of them are e-slips. With those automated submission systems, one wonders if one’s work isn’t being evaluated by a computer. But at least you get a response from the machine.

Back in The Day, I don’t recall as many editors just blowing one off. Nowadays, you can query after six months, not get any response, and then wait another year, and never receive a rejection slip. Or get an acceptance after two years – never having heard a peep in the interim! (true story)

How come the lack of rejection slips? Well, Carol Novak at Mad Hatters Review is gracious enough to explain (in paradigmatic Carol N. fashion):

“. . . we hate sending rejection emails and refuse to do so. So please -- if
you haven't heard from us within 120 days of your submission, presume
that ‘while we enjoyed your submission, it didn't suit our current
needs.’ This has got to be the dumbest, most over-used rejection letter
language both of us editors and you have had the misfortune to read.
Lots of chi-chi journals send out letters like that. We've surmised that
lots of chi-chi editors lack imagination.”

So, in some cases, it may be a rejection of the rejection slip as a genre. In other cases, it may just be that the crush of submissions are simply overwhelming, and the editors give up trying to respond to all of them. With 10-50K publishing poets in the US alone, who can blame them??

In other cases, the editors may simply be too cool to interact with the creators of work they disdain. I suspect that may have been the case with Narrativity – which prompted this hilarious and brilliant piece by Paul VanDeCarr - which they couldn't help but publish.

And thank heavens for journals like Abraham Lincoln, which promises to laugh at unsolicited submissions. That’s incredibly refreshing – like a post-dated rejection slip, first thing in the mornin’!

Anyway, I’d be interested in other people’s experiences, rejection-slip-wise, in recent years. Is the silent “Whatever” replacing the written response to submissions?

"It may be that the continuity of tradition is mere semblance. But then precisely the persistence of this semblance of persistence provides it with continuity."
- Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project, N 19,1

think about that, next time you listen to the news; the effects will be striking.

AIGony

You don't think this has anything to do with it, do you?