By: Gary B. Fitzgerald

Gary B. Fitzgerald — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:14:05 +0000

The Supreme Court was at a loss. What a strange case! The Flarf group was suing the Feneon Collective. The Collective countersued. The School of Quietude submitted a ‘Friend of the Court’ brief recommending that they all be hung from the beams of the theater in Stratford-upon-Avon. M Whitman scratched his head and turned away. Mme Plath started laughing. It was reported that M Thoreau vomited on his shoes.

By: john

john — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:46:07 +0000

Lawsuits! Now we’re talkin’! Let’s get some good avant-garde high dudgeon going.
Next up — a duel!
With unsold copies of each other’s books as weapons.

By: "noah freed"

"noah freed" — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:25:00 +0000

… and why is it, I wonder, that the humorless Flarfistas so promptly threaten legal action at the slightest provocation — these poets whose art is entirely based on the unsanctioned appropriation of others’ discourse? How can it be that they who prankishly — sometimes quite amusingly — attempt to subvert the dominant solemnity of contemporary poetics are the first to seek recourse in the most oppressive of state institutions when someone dares to make fun of them in return? How insular!

By: "noah freed"

"noah freed" — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:54:38 +0000

A lawsuit? Let it come down, as the murderer says in Macbeth. It will be terrifically entertaining for you (I mean, for the Fénéon Collective) & frustrating & embarrassing for the plaintiff. I doubt he or she will bother, but you should definitely encourage him or her, as if it went forward it would be tossed as frivolous, & you might be able to claim some damages. The person can’t really think being satirized is actionable? If he’s a known poet, he’s a public figure, even if a terribly inconsequential one, & courts have consistently ruled in favor of artists in such cases. Quite hilarious. And surely guaranteed to draw even more satire down on his head, I would imagine.

By: Doodle

Doodle — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:18:45 +0000

But they’d only ask for a Photoshopped dollar in damages, one presumes?

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:34:42 +0000

Oh my.
Someone has just told me (my source is unimpeachable) that a prominent member of the Flarf group has threatened suit against the feneon collective.
Kent

By: john

john — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:30:26 +0000

p.s. I, too, enjoyed David-Baptiste Chirot’s post.
Just wanted to put a word in for the Greek Anthology, not take anything away from the great Martial (or the pointed, delightful puns thereon).

By: john

john — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:33:54 +0000

“[Martial] is considered the creator of the modern epigram.”
While Martial codified the modern epigram, Greek poets Lucilius and Nikarchos gave the form its satiric, comic spin a few decades before Martial. This is from Nikarchos, trans. by Robin Skelton, from the Penguin edition of “The Greek Anthology,” edited by Peter Green:
If blocked, a fart can kill a man;
if let escape, a fart can sing
health-giving songs; farts kill and save:
a fart is powerful as a king.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:20:00 +0000

The above by David-Baptiste Chirot is really quite sharp, and some of the pieces very funny. And he makes some excellent satirical points! (Also, as I’ve mentioned, his Feneon blog is a must see–probably the best collection of Feneon materials on the web.)
I see that the Faits Divers blog is now up and running again, with more entries.
Curious doings…
Kent

By: david-baptiste chirot

david-baptiste chirot — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:48:19 +0000

“Faits dit vers” comme “faits d’hiver”—
“Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?”
Le collectif dit “Feneon” est plutot une groupe de “fais-neants” qui n’appartient point des “nouvelles,” mais de la tradition des epigrames de Martial.
Comme disait Fellini au sujet de son “Satyricon,” ‘c’est un film de la science fiction’ la mise-en-scene duquel se trouve au passé.”
Blaguer le blogger-!
A few “faits divers” re the FC-
Though working overtime, the Feneon collective’s goal of being mentioned on M Silliman’s blog has yet to bear fruit. Disgruntled workers staging a strike, set upon by goons, burned in effigy their FC bosses, who called in the Riot Squad. This incident, it is hoped, will finally draw M Silliman’s attention.
Anonymous donors, an anonymous Monk informs visitors, created the Shrine for the purpose of ten times a day prayers, the invocations of which are for Perpetual Notice to be taken of the FC on every Poetry blog, especially that of Canon Silliman.
Confusing epigrammatic satires of poetry cliques with social activism and avant-gardism, the FC asserts its “news items” exemplify Pound’s “Poetry is news that stays news.” Anarchist youths, chased by FC Police, are distributing FC tracts to the needy for use in litter boxes and parrot cages, chanting the slogan “Who needs yesterday’s papers.”
Having taken Secretary Rumsfeld under her wing as a 21st century Marinetti, Dr Perloff has won a no-bid Federal contract for the Stanford colleagues’ Institute of Opacity. Its Secrecy, Neo-Futurist Rumsfield jokes, “will top that of the Situationists’ “Bureau of Secrets.”
Applying for a Grant, the FC had described itself as a contemporary blog version of Martial. Enraged that a sardonic bureaucrat awarded instead a “real Martial Arts program,” the FC’s counter-attack has run afoul of a Ninja Anarchist Study group’s “hand delivered” “Propaganda of the Deed.”
Billed as an Exhibition of American Avant Poets’ Portraits, with Surprise Readers,
The Anonymous Gallery’s show is being held liable for the “psychological war fare post traumatic stress disorder” produced by the poets’ having been locked into a Hall of Mirrors and blasted with tape loops of their own readings.
The FC today began a Letter Campaign to collect signatures demanding the President and Supreme Court decree that the FC be a daily feature on Silliman’s Blog, the Poetics List and all other US poetry blogs. Under subpoena in the bribery investigations of Gov. “Blogo” the Illinois based FC may turn State’s Witness in exchange for this Federal favor. The FC denies any connection between these two ongoing stories.
In the early 1950’s, one of the Italian Neo_-realist directors proposed the idea of throwing a camera in the air; whoever caught camera would then be a director, a cameraman and simply film whatever was the course of the person’s day. (Several “natural” wags over the years have remarked that in Italy this is much easier to do than other countries, as Italians are “born actors/acting” and the beauty of the landscape and arts surrounding them make them “natural born” visual artists..)
(Naturalism however, is not the same thing as Neo-Realism–)
teachers of many spiritual traditions the world round have remarked to the effect that the person who prays in public prays not to the Divine, but to that spirit of egotism in themselves which demands that all around take notice of one’s great piety.
Or, as the poet has it–”Methinks he doth protest too much”–
The Feneon Collective so called is not a “new form” creating, but following in the old Roman footsteps of Martial (Although one might claim that the epigram in terms of epitaph–and epithet– is far more ancient, and is found first expressed in Archilocus’s verse.)
The more one travels into the “future,’ the closer one becomes to the past.
The continual promotional campaign of the “anonymous” blogs of an anonymous collective is a constant cry for attention, the opposite of Feneon’s “I aspire to silence,” which led him to not long after the writing of the faits divers to abandon al writing except for letters to friends and business associates.
Feneon is a writer whose trajectory is towards that “I prefer not to” of Bartleby marked by the encounter with Rimbaud’s “I is an other,” a “some one else” than “simply” a writer. Rimbaud went into gun running and coffee exports, the trading of trinkets and interior explorations whose accounts he sent to the new Geographical journals in France. After their minimal success, he abandoned these writings also. Feneon, the greatest art critic in France since Baudelaire, except for the rare catalog descriptions done for the auctions of friend’s collections, or notes for the art gallery in which he became a professional seller for the last decades of his life, also abandoned even the anonymous and pseudonymous writings of his artistic and anarchist past.
One of the major contradictions of many American poets’ works for over thirty years has been the constant assertion of “the death of the author,” the “critique of the self,” which have produced such opposite effects such as the advertising campaigns of the “Conceptual” works of Kenny G, the promotional forays of the Flarifists and the publicity driven “anonymous” FC.
“Be Street Smart. Don’t Get Caught”– was a sticker and t-shirt distributed by the anonymous Coup de Grace over twenty years ago in Boston.
This was also Feneon’s credo, until he was under the splotlights in the Trial of the Thirty, a publicity which sent him further into anonymity with the “faits divers” and his not long after realization of the aspiration to silence.
Look at it this way: does a person who wishes to be anonymous go about loudly trumpeting themselves, demanding to be heard on every blog and TV station and radio feed possible? To be like the “anonymous” Joe the Plumber and sign record and book deals, become a paid political pundit on Fox, or eventually run for some high degree office—
This is where, to me, the “anonymity” and “death of the author” und so weiter, perform the function of the “plant” who “magically appears out of nowhere, a no one, “un homme qui-conque” “una donna senza nome” “a face in the crowd”—and turns out to be—a star!!!
Using this model—a great favorite at concerts by Bobby Blue bland and B.B. King was the “Viola” who just so happened to be seated in the crowd as an anonymous Sister—and invited to come shyly onstage– could SING—and I mean, REALLY SING!—“as well as any professional”—because she was indeed just that—this was done so often and so well that it became in itself an enjoyable feature that though everyone knew, all acted surprised by the Violas, as a tribute to the skill with which it was pulled off year after year over hundreds and hundreds of shows—
Using this model of the plant, what one finds is that the “dead authors” now plant themselves as an “anonymous” face in the crowd, which is invited—by themselves—up onstage and turns under the spotlights—into a star!! An American idol!!
Another aspect of this “anonymous and hitherto unknown star hidden in our midst”—“just dying to be discovered” (the death wish of the “dead author”–?)—is that when using or citing earlier examples as models, such as in this case, Feneon, what is invoked is not the actual reading of Feneon’s works and ideas, but the projecting on to him of the “anonymous” “dead author’s” desires to be READ, not as a long buried classic brought to life largely by the actual death of the original writer–, but as an INSTANT CLASSIC—
Recognized and feted NOW—
In a bizarre and paradoxical way, the “attention deficit disorder’ which Americans are portrayed as having “en masse” as Whitman wd say– (to the great benefit of the pharmaceutical and health care guru industries–) is producing a drive for more than the “fifteen minutes/ seconds of fame” Andy Warhol once promised to be deliver to every one someday.
This drive for a more lasting and higher staying power as an attention getter may be examined then as the exploitation of “gimmicks” and “shticks” to keep the audiences’ eyes focused on one, as being a proven and dependable deliverer of the goods.
In this case, anonymity becomes a gimmick rather than an actual demonstration or investigation, just as the loud noises of the Flarfists and Conceptualists are mechanisms of “career advancement” and “placement in anthologies,” or recognition as the “most prominent spokesperson/s for the new movement” and so on—
It is as though the “dead authors” are even more ego obsessed than those critiqued by the “critique of the self,” and so, like the Living Dead, keep on “coming back”—
As sequels, prequels, post prequels, reverse engineered retro futurist post romantic chance operations pre programmed for post operative self examinations in the gigantic mirrors of the self—a Narcissus providing its own Echo—
And who knows, perhaps applying at some point MARTIAL LAW—
“In honor of Martial—“
“Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) (March 1, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD), was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirizes city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets. He is considered the creator of the modern epigram.

Comments on: Faits Divers de la Poesie Americaine et Britannique,

By: Gary B. Fitzgerald

By: john

By: "noah freed"

By: "noah freed"

By: Doodle

By: Kent Johnson

By: john

By: john

By: Kent Johnson

By: david-baptiste chirot