Comments on: Flarf vs. Conceptual Writing

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:56:42 +0000

You got me there, Bob – and I’d give anything to have Mary Worth in our own pages!
We did have Tintin on the cover, though, in January.

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:39:02 +0000

"Hey, we've had comics in Poetry, too, you know!" Good to know, Don. But I'll bet you don't have anything up to Mary Worth. Dunno if the Trib does, either--I just assume every newspaper must have Mary Worth!

By: Don Share

Don Share — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:28:01 +0000

Hey, we've had comics in Poetry, too, you know! Both the Trib and Poetry now have a grab-and-go format, so the race to cultural significance will occur on an even field. The a-g, of course, will be in front of us both, for those keeping score. Oh, and another comic-inclusive mag, The New Yorker, has just produced this essay on the death of newspapers. Yrs. accomodatingly...

By: Tom Harr

Tom Harr — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:07:55 +0000

“Post-Edwardian” and “accomodation,” wow, that’s gonna hurt! There’s no pleasing some folks. I’ll check out those comics, at any rate, as well as Big Bridge, Mad Hatters Review, and your blog.

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:00:21 +0000

I may never have read the Trib but I assume it has comics. Therefore, it's of more cultural value than Poetry. That's a trivial assertion and glib, but I have browsed a few recent issues of Poetry which have made a few gestures of accommodation with "avant garde" poetry, but it still seems to me working mainly to come to terms with post-Edwardian poetry. I'm no longer too up on what poetry publications are out there, although no American poetry-publishing magazine reaching more than a few hundred or maybe a thousand readers that I am familiar with seems to me of any cultural value (at least so far as poetry is concerned). But some on the Internet like Big Bridge and Mad Hatters Review spring to mind as reasonably valuable publications culturally. Some of these may reach a lot of people. Okay, I've delivered my boilerplate. I have a blog if anyone wants anything more from me on poetry and poetics. (Currently, I'm hard at work on Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18." Figure that.) --Bob G.

By: Tom Harr

Tom Harr — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:44:21 +0000

Sorry to be obtuse, Bob. I guess I thought the crack about the Trib vs. Poetry was some sort of a-g humor. Maybe it’s just glibness. If you were being completely serious, I beg your pardon – but I’d then have to wonder if you’ve seen either publication lately. The Trib, well… it’s trivial.
That said, why not let folks know what poetry publications you think are “culturally valuable.” And we can also discuss what we mean by cultural value.

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:24:44 +0000

“Leave it to avant-garde to make trivial evaluational assertions, eh?” –Tom Harr
I don’t follow, Tom. Are Joseph, Andy and I all avant garde? I happen not to think there’s an avant garde in the arts, anymore, but if there is one, I suppose I’m part of it.

By: Tom Harr

Tom Harr — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:46:30 +0000

Leave it to avant-garde to make trivial evaluational assertions, eh?

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:01:01 +0000

Why isn’t the flarf piece also conceptual?
Joseph has Andy Dancer wrong: he is not implying no poetry has value but that it is as dumb to say conceptual and flarf poetry are approaching worthlessness as it is to say any other poetry is. Both of you are just making trivial evaluational assertions. And it’s absurd to couple Poetry with the Trib; the latter is much more culturally valuable (to make my own trivial evaluational assertion).

By: Doodle

Doodle — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:19:11 +0000

When I was a tadpole and you were a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide,
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip,
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.
Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,
And mindless at last we died,
And deep in a rift of the caradoc drift,
We slumbered side by side,
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,
And crept into light again.
We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man’s hand,
We coiled at ease ‘neath the dripping trees,
Or trailed through the mud and sand,
Croaking and blind with our three clawed feet,
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark ,
To hint at a life to come.
Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more,
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mould,
Of a Neocomian shore,
The aeons came and the aeons fled,
And the sleep that wrapped us fast,
Was riven away with a newer day,
And the night of death was past.
When light and swift through the jungle trees,
We swung on our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,
In the hush of the moonless nights,
And Oh! what beautiful years were these,
When our hearts clung each to each,
When life was filled, and our senses thrilled,
In the first faint dawn of speech.
Thus life by life and love by love,
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death,
We followed the chain of change,
Till there came a time in the law of life,
When over the nursing sod,
The shadows broke and the soul awoke,
In a strange dim dream of God.
God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds,
And furnished them wings to fly,
He sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves,
Where the crook-boned men made war,
And the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves,
Where the mummied mammoths are.
Then as we linger at luncheon here,
O’er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when I,
Was a tadpole and you were a fish.
– Langdon Smith, 1895