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Flarf and Conceptual Writing in Poetry Magazine
An introduction to the 21st Century’s most controversial poetry movements.
From the July/August 2009 Issue of Poetry Magazine
by Kenneth Goldsmith
Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned. But not in ways you would imagine . . .
READ THE REST HERE.
Tags: Conceptual Poetry, Flarf
Posted in Uncategorized on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 by Kenneth Goldsmith.
Comments (18)
truth and beauty are in love
like the clouds they drift above
dancing slowly in the air
bright as flowers
always there
…………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………..
“We were so in love before”
we were so in love before
til you found somebody new
I could give you so much more
than he could ever do
and we could live in castles we’d call home
with sparkling magic in the halls
we could rent a villa outside Rome
tuscan paintings on the walls
we were so in love before
why’d you have to find somebody new
why must you go, before
is there nothing I can do
I could love you so much more
I can’t tell you enough again
why can’t you know for sure
it’s not a one night stand
we were so in love before…
………………………………………….
conceptual and romantic
written by me
Duane. I love you. If you truely respect our Indian ancestors you will respect your elder sister, as our father respected his. I don’t want anything from you but the love of my brother. I was just there for a week during which time I witnessed Elisa and her brother Steve. All I ask of you is to admit your love for your sister. Is that so hard? I respect you as a man, you need to find your respect for me, as a woman and as your elder sister.
At first I thought this said, “An introduction to the 21st Century’s most conventional poetry movements.” Hmmm…
Dale Smith has an interesting and serious response to Kenny Goldsmith’s Intro/Manifesto today at Possum Pouch:
http://www.possumego.blogspot.com/
His phrase for the phenomenon, a handy one for future reference, perhaps, is “F-Con Po.” But read his essay.
Kent
Conversation unfolding at Dale Smith’s blog, link above.
But where are the F-Con Po poets?
Exchange is good. Or so the principle used to be…
Kent
I was always confused about what Flarf poetry was, hearing about it from the sidelines when lurking at Ron da Silly mohn y’all, finkin wut it wahz is yah, Flarf ‘n that bein all like, yoo hoo, ha ha ha, halooo ah – look at moi, innit maaarhd mohn, flarf like, aint wheeze all crazee po-mo dingalongs diggin in fo yo ! flarf
I listened to the commentaries keeping the product itself at bay, trying to figure out what it was by atuning to the circumstantial evidence, rather than going straight to the product itself, and trusting one’s instinct to the cosmic mill, the gear itself ground to mine ear like sweet sounds that breathe upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more, tis not so crazee now as it was before, methought.
Then i saw some vidz of flarf being recited at The Flarf Festival 06 at the Medicine Show Theatre NYC, and realised it was all a bit of hoo ha over nothing substantial really, now is it?
It was student japes, a one joke pony enacted by one’s middle-age adolescence, and essentially an in-joke of a very very small minority, rather than any serious attempt at working in or extended the Write-Through form, which (from my understanding) is a central compositional plank in flarf.
The write-through form is when we take a text as the raw material, then juggle and re-jig the words (effectively the letters) into another text.
My first attempt at write-through was Sylvia Plath’s Colossus, (the process is documented at the link) after writing a poem and suddenly having the idea to re-write it into another one, using the exact same words and letters. After completeing that task, i decided to take a random poem of another author, choosing Colossus because the book was resting on the computer monitor and flipping through it till i landed on this poem about her father.
This was in the third year of a Writing Studies BA, and when i showed it to Robert Sheppard, a British poet connected whose poetic is pure Langpo, who created and ran the course in which the poetry component was all American Modernism – he told me the form was Write-Through, but i cannot remember the name of the poet who coined it.
The write-through method is at the opposite end of the compositional spectrum from strict metrical writing, but at least, if not more intellectually challenging, as it is like sieving ones mind through a tea strainer; knocking down an edifice of letters, and rebuilding an entirely different text with them. It is great exercise for homing one’s cerebral fluidity, as we don’t have to think of anything apart from combining the letters into soemthing readable.
For your first time, i would advocate using no cheating, using every single letter, and as you get handier, the form sorts itself out and becomes just another trick in the tool-kit for composing. Small blog desposits are ideal, as you can reverse the polarity.
I had a spell of writing through Carol Rumens’ poem of the week when she first started on the Guardian, starting with Gary Snyder and working a way through a fair number of ‘em. As far as i know (and in keeping with the boasty nature of flarf) i am the only person working in this form.
This is an example, where i took a negative comment from the blog of American poet resident in London, Katy Evans Bush and wrote through it.
“Dear Ms Baroque (If that is your real name)
Did you know the following?
a. Noone cares about your opinion.
b. Your photo alone is enough to make most either stop reading, vomit on there crotch or track you down just to slap you round your pretensious face with there flacid cock.
c. Your head is so far up your anal passage that you have gone on a disgusting trip, passing the wonders of your bowels, instestines, stomach, up your esphongus and out your mouth which has never known when to shut up.”
Write-Through
Kieran Special – “PLAIN ECES, AIR, K”
Dear Baroque
Did you know that you
Alone make most here care
About your words
And love you for your
Face, your name, reality
And poetical opinion;
Sensuous sage who honey mouths
The art of hope,
A truth torc loose around your neck;
Sing with the eye alone
Hear alphabets’ music wooing in ether.
Your tongue scripts star-light,
Its naked truth shoving asunder
Chasms of doubt, out past new
Moon-strips opposite sun rings
Pouring down his wing-shook
Privacy, a huff on jute
You own,
chop to us
C.
You might try write-thru on Pierre Menard’s version of Don Quixote.
All the current research points in this direction, and I believe I can say, on balance, that we’ve concluded, fairly conclusively – and I say “we” advisedly – that nothing can truly be termed “conceptual”, unless it includes the term “post-”.
Thank you, and good night.
Dear World
I am an expert in judging and teaching this kind of student.
I am one of the best-known poets and critics now living.
I have a pretty high reputation for this kind of teaching.
I have taught a great many exceptionally brilliant students.
My name is Bosty Rovy Sretniw, backwards champ of me me me Winters
I can teach more about the art of writing in verse and about the history of this art than anyone in the country save perhaps Cunningham.
Look, here’s a sample of one’s every soo posh pooh a tray
Where am I now? And what
Am I to say portends?
Death is but death, and not
The most obtuse of ends.
My name is Yvor and I am a genius.
I talk daily with learned and brilliant men, most of whom have seen a lot.
You may have heard of how fantstic i am from myself and those i tell how superbly clever and great and fab and…do you feel inferior yet? – hark, i speak to God direct, make the rhymes of my poems connect exact, whacked down now with the intelliegence of who is probably the greatest man in American letters, do you get it yet said bed fed blah blah oh you’re so effin clever int yer Winty lah?
Immeasurable haze:
The desert valley spreads
Up golden river-beds
As if in other days.
Trees rise and thin away,
And past the trees, the hills,
Pure line and shade of dust,
Bear witness to our wills:
We see them, for we must;
Calm in deceit, they stay.
Snooze, snooze, yous a right teflon head with a brain so big all bow before you, God’s gift Winters.
These are thy fallen sons,
Thou whom I try to reach.
Thou whom the quick eye shuns,
Thou dost elude my speech.
You really like rhymink in a very precise way, it’s a vice innit Winters, that you’ve got there Homer pal.
But when I go from sense
And trace thee down in thought,
I meet thee, then, intense
And know thee as I ought.
Bought, taught, caught, fought, sought naught phwoar wharra boring git Winters you wuz not a genius but an over-inflated ego, innit hey Winters, flarf’s finest you wuz mate, gate, bate wait trait straight straight straight inflation of yerself..
Yvor Winters, for all that he seems to have written poetry with a ramrod permanently implanted in his posterior, taught Thom Gunn, Philip Levine, N. Scott Momaday and Robert Pinsky, which ain’t a bad drumroll. I think he tried hard to be a baleful influence on American poetry but the seitgeist was flowing in another direction, toward the Allen anthology.
And what exactly does Winters have to do with flarf?
Ebony Summers
typo: Ebon
Britney Swords, Desmond Spears
I am just trying to lure the bard of Armagh into yielding more of his finely wrought consciousness Sir John, knowing Winters is on his hit list and on reading Yvor in the latest issue of Poetry, which has horrified many a poster on that radically subversive poetry board ablemuse-eratosphere, appalled flarf poetry had reached:
“…a new low-water mark in the publication of Poetry?”
There are many outraged and unhappy posters, close to the edge mohn, yah, rip Jah up dem sigheed:
This is why one of these days I’ll probably take a hiatus from poetry for several years (again) and return to my musical proclivities.
Oh hear ye fools in verbal trade
what is shoddy and not well made
in a country where knaves teach
less and less literature each day
where ignorance reigns supreme
and fewer people read, but steal
that which is written, to write ten
and more flarf poems at one sitting –
I guess the long and the short of it is that..you just have to focus on your own craft, and not worry about what others are doing and/or publishing…I sometimes wonder if maybe the Dickinson approach is the best. Just file them all away somewhere and hope they’ll be discovered post mortem to a much more sensible audience.
ask yourself, not what s/he can give
you, what gift of the mind invisibly
got gets you to the top,
but what you can give the mohn
who give you blud clop ‘n git-stab
…it has seemed to me that the last year or two of Poetry has been pretty good…Wiman is consciously trying to represent a wide range of styles and schools, while trying to maintain a high standard — a tough task.
up shady back lanes where scangers
drink, sniff and shoot from the lip
vile accursed oaths to a pissing
down sky. Bent over double, scumbag
dort bords who’ll jigger in real
live evil warm and nice, backwards
mirror every thought you ever had
and turn the feet of mother earth
I stopped my subscription to Poetry when I could no longer stomach their self-styled image as a barometer of contemporary poetry, when in fact their attitude is parochial, elitist and narrow-minded in the extreme…with some exceptions, has a sameness that makes you feel it might have been written by a few of the same people (which a lot of it is)…much if not most…utter incomprehensible gibberish…puts people off poetry because…makes them feel dumb..perplexed..bored..brought down the wrath of the Universe…I consider myself an open-minded, intelligent person…I have tried, really tried, but fail to understand the prestigious reputation Poetry continues to enjoy.
Revolutionary as a Bosch CBS 520
Interrogating oranges in Cuba
at full torque – ask yourself, what’s
surreal as a lemon in outer space,
ducks quack in a vacuum and Welsh
tragedy played straight on the face
of a red dwarf in the Virgo
Supercluster – buster.
“My first marriage took place in the Rothko chapel
…we don’t like what’s playing on one channel
exactly explain what it is that’s ‘new’ or ‘conceptual’ Whitman: did the list a hundred and fifty years ago
invoke the imitative fallacy
…contemporary mall directory poems fail because they’re too “mallish”, not because there’s something inherently un-poetic about malls
..Ruth Lilly, what hath thou wrought?
a formalist poet, give me hope for our art,
for the rest of its oy vey.
didn’t say that “everything” was bad
fans, and neo-beatniks getting all the way
through any given issue
too divided into schools
Sudoku? Armantrout put it in its place
last month’s issue
often seems like a lot of wank
writing a play about dull lives
Trying to put things back
serves up Videlock, Stallings, Goldbarth,
et al elsewhere
Apples, schnapples, want that analogy
the slush pile, I’m putting a dollar on
Mallarmé, Apollinaire, newspapers
and billboard posters, Alien vs. Predator
reading the product’s “blurb”
the context and commentary for Duchamp’s urinal
Guy Debord and Jean-Luc Godard, détournement
the best example, Ducasse’s Poésies of course
is what pop art is all about also
bored with a narcissistic wank job,
designing a tire-girded goat, or a flower
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no,
‘real poetry’
fusing the avant-garde impulse
explaining a shattered yo-yo, shit in boxes
Bananas not apples, and yet a wrecking bar
smashes your yo-yo,
come to you in sheep’s clothing, the great poet
11 per year and most only relating
a kind of corrosive, cute, or cloying awfulness
intentionally bad, frivolous, or wacky, formed
by a collage of quasi-random stand-up comedienne”
Thanks for the knighthood Des.
Dichotomy is scaffolding.
Dichotomy is scaffolding… reality is burning. Flarf tastes of ash on the wind.
Peruvian poet Mirko Lauer, my translation, published in New World: New Words (Center for the Art of Translation, 2007). Caveats for long-line overrun in blog format.
SURVIVAL:
EIGHT STANZAS OF COMMENTARY ON THE WORDS OF BUDDHA
All of reality is burning, and you can’t beat that as a sentence.
Complete reality accumulates in a volatile stack
at the limits of loss. What’s yours and what’s his are consumed
leaning against the retina, on the smooth palm of your hand.
Only love’s a grave thing, grave as the world’s universal gravity
which weighs equally burning Isaac Newton and an apple.
Nobody bathes twice in the same river, and you can’t beat that as a sentence either.
The world lacks a shadow, reality’s the oil your heart floats in.
Doors open on boiling water: you get out of one river and get in another;
your bones shiver with ignorance on all thresholds, while your reckless soul
sails on sustained by unknowns and by feathers.
Silence unites eloquence and first–degree dangers,
possibilities of words that are flowerings of the skin,
wounds and multicolors heaped to form a black tower. Your brothers
the corpses are toasting in that silence, and stalagmites
attract dribbling lightning nobody dares to grasp for the sacrifice
of reality that falls all over itself, with flames and crackling.
A rustling beach of dry towels at the shore of the shower reminds you
of the passage of water which comprises all reality and yields
ablution of existence to soiled unmoving in two instants:
alabaster and onyx, onomatopoeia and miracle,
metaphorical life and literal death, the cradle and the bed,
filling your ears with the boxed fru–fru of these combinations.
Birds fly with flaming feathers, perforated by combustible air,
their hexagonal bodies traversing, delayed along the bias.
In the southern desert light pierces the dust, lifting fragile columns
the wind carries away in flames. And even what’s unreal holds your head
against that of a match which explodes in a glance’s fission,
prisoner likewise of an inextinguishable flame.
Forgiven by the unforgivable, your chest boasting wet flowers,
chlorophyll and cadmium bunched: water that you are and grasp,
flow in which you see and are, impeccably adrift, molested.
And you leave the bacchanal engrossed, your hands washed and a sailboat
tacking against the wind of your dream. Sponges which are darts seek your chest,
find your chest, pass through your chest and forget your chest in their flight.
Nobody laughs twice in the same bathtub, nor rubs their body against another
without multiplying it. Banal and tragic conclusion: it’s impossible
to be alone without the aid of a mirror. And you leave your cell perplexed, your temples frozen;
and you leave your study wiped out, with drenched femurs;
and you get out of the river and get in the river and get in the river and get out of the river
through an expiatory abyss of portals and trampolines.
There’s a bonfire in the golden entrails of the guinea pig. All of reality is suffering
the burning stain of that uncaressable mildness. Your house is burning while you sleep,
the world screams while you contemplate, the ovens groan with jaws ajar
exhausted by the ash that lacerates your confused forehead, and floats toward the green ground
where a million blades of grass are consumed to make one meadow.
Self-promotion is commentary.