Excerpts
Now Morally Obligated to Post a Retaliation After Every Post Justin Makes Dissing Flarf
Here is the first paragraph of Dan Hoy’s essay, which Justin links in the below post and I won’t bother linking again, since it is, obviously, the only thing you need to read about Flarf, which is that thing, full of poems, poem things, but you only need to read an essay, about them, the poems, about making them, uh huh, yeah.
Google is not a spontaneous manifestation of the zeitgeist in the virtual realm. That it is often misconstrued as such is due to a passive acceptance of its process and mythos, from its humble beginnings and benign-sounding name to the embedded cultural belief that the Internet is the great democratic frontier in which all information is equalized — the user, instead of the disseminator, is the arbiter of what is useful and not useful — and the residual PR advantage this gives to in utero virtual corporations like Google and Yahoo! over preexisting technocapitalist transplants like Microsoft. Google is considered an organic entity only marginally different from a construct like Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia in which users define the content by continually creating, altering, contesting, and amalgamating entries.
Now here is most of Drew Gardner’s “Why Do I Hate Flarf So Much” from the July/August 2009 issue of Poetry:
She came from the mountains, killing zombies at will. Some people cried “but that was cool!” and I could only whisper “we should NOT be killing zombies!” What have you gotten yourself to do? Did it ever occur to you that you may in fact hate yourself? I know I do . . . I’m not nearly high enough yet—and you’re not helping. My group got invited to join the Flarfist Collective, set up some hibachis and do what we do best, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with this writing if it were a library and I checked out the entire world as if it were a single book. Strike “helpful” off your list. The 4th quarter gets pretty intense and the announcers are usually trying to figure out who is going to become overwhelmed by their own arrogant nightmares. It would upset the stomach of the balance of nature. I always go red over the stupidest things and I have no clue why. Whether it’s speaking in front of the class or someone asking me why I think I have the right to say anything. Why do I need an enemy to feel okay about what I’m doing? Observe yourself as you browse with sophistication through the topic of Authorship & Credibility. Why do I hate the surface of the world so much that I want to poison it? Why do I hate this so much? Well . . . you Hate Your Fucking Dad! Why is the screen so damn small? And why does the car turn so sharply? And why is the only sound I hear the sound of a raft of marmosets? BECAUSE I’m fucking ANXIOUS AS HELL about EVERYTHING. AAAAAAAAARGH. It’s even worse: “I’ll tell you later.” The medium is literally made of thousands of beautiful, living, breathing wolves. Why do I hate the moon so much? Unpublish your ideas in reverse. People hate any new way of writing. My girlfriend really hates it. There is not so much daytime left. Life is like spring snow tossing off mercurial Creeley-like escapes from life-threatening health problems. In summer we love winter in winter we love summer—all poetry is written in social mercurochrome. Since I hate the abridgement of life, a function of needing to please unpleaseable parents is more what this is about. Hate and love—if those are the options I just want to love and hate lobsters.
Tags: what has the most zombies in it
if i make any comment besides this comment feel free to shoot me
if i make any comment besides this comment feel free to shoot me
I am confused.
I am confused.
I didn’t post anything dissing flarf. I’m allowed to say the word “flarf” if I want to. If it happens to be such a deeply flawed practice that even speaking its name evokes the specter of everything wrong with it, and the awareness of the world’s awareness of its weakness, as if these qualities were in fact its defining features–well, responsibility for that can hardly be laid at my feet. But hey, let me be the first one to say that that’s a pretty big if.
Last comment!
I didn’t post anything dissing flarf. I’m allowed to say the word “flarf” if I want to. If it happens to be such a deeply flawed practice that even speaking its name evokes the specter of everything wrong with it, and the awareness of the world’s awareness of its weakness, as if these qualities were in fact its defining features–well, responsibility for that can hardly be laid at my feet. But hey, let me be the first one to say that that’s a pretty big if.
Last comment!
::assuming the duck and cover::
I must say, you have an interesting way of defining “didn’t”…
(last comment for me too. it should work this way more often!)
Say what you will about the tenants of national socialism, Dude. At least it’s an ethos.
I believe that K. Silem Mohammed’s Sonnograms will survive the next thousand years. I’ll build the bomb-proof shelter that will house them, if I have to.
::assuming the duck and cover::
I must say, you have an interesting way of defining “didn’t”…
(last comment for me too. it should work this way more often!)
Say what you will about the tenants of national socialism, Dude. At least it’s an ethos.
I believe that K. Silem Mohammed’s Sonnograms will survive the next thousand years. I’ll build the bomb-proof shelter that will house them, if I have to.
i love it when the kids have a good ol’ fashioned pillow fight!
i love it when the kids have a good ol’ fashioned pillow fight!
Good tag.
Good tag.
It seems weird when poets take something comedians were doing for laughs and copy it while pretending it is something really deep.
It seems weird when poets take something comedians were doing for laughs and copy it while pretending it is something really deep.
isn’t your comment deeply about “art” (like it adds the quotes i just added)
isn’t your comment deeply about “art” (like it adds the quotes i just added)
I had never heard the word flarf until today and I still don’t know what it is
I had never heard the word flarf until today and I still don’t know what it is
Same here. I had to look it up.
Now that I know what it is, I want that lost time back.
Stuff like flarf has been around for a very long time.
Same here. I had to look it up.
Now that I know what it is, I want that lost time back.
Stuff like flarf has been around for a very long time.
Two clicks from away from flarf you get “Schizophasia”.
Two clicks from away from flarf you get “Schizophasia”.
“Google is considered an organic entity only marginally different from a construct like Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia in which users define the content by continually creating, altering, contesting, and amalgamating entries.” I like Dan Hoy but I don’t agree that Flarf thinks of Google like this at all. Poetry, for Flarf, is the reartificialisation of reference. If Google’s ideology is to encode its organization as comprehensive randomness, so in turn Google’s false random-authoritativeness is subjected to re-organization in the transformation of “chance” into distinctly un-authoritative poetic code. Anyhow, as Hoy realises, Wikipedia is hardly free of selective hierarchy. It’s a far more complicated shape than a rhizome. It is participatory in a way that founders against language barriers, against class barriers, against the organization of itself against ultimate responsibility of information supply. Quite neoliberal if taken in that sense. And wikipedia is a type of ideal for Google, which has the lovely, un-evil dream of making all information available to its perusal. I think Flarf would have failed – and been a mere repetition of surrealist experiments – if it had used a “truly” random generator as its muse. Its method works because its material is deceitful. And the reason Flarf raise such ire is not because its ironic but because it plays the system straight.
“Google is considered an organic entity only marginally different from a construct like Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia in which users define the content by continually creating, altering, contesting, and amalgamating entries.” I like Dan Hoy but I don’t agree that Flarf thinks of Google like this at all. Poetry, for Flarf, is the reartificialisation of reference. If Google’s ideology is to encode its organization as comprehensive randomness, so in turn Google’s false random-authoritativeness is subjected to re-organization in the transformation of “chance” into distinctly un-authoritative poetic code. Anyhow, as Hoy realises, Wikipedia is hardly free of selective hierarchy. It’s a far more complicated shape than a rhizome. It is participatory in a way that founders against language barriers, against class barriers, against the organization of itself against ultimate responsibility of information supply. Quite neoliberal if taken in that sense. And wikipedia is a type of ideal for Google, which has the lovely, un-evil dream of making all information available to its perusal. I think Flarf would have failed – and been a mere repetition of surrealist experiments – if it had used a “truly” random generator as its muse. Its method works because its material is deceitful. And the reason Flarf raise such ire is not because its ironic but because it plays the system straight.
lobsters
lobsters
I like Flarf.
I like Flarf.
as someone who has never written flarf but appreciate the weirdness it creates, i thought i would share this rhizome post my friend did. http://rhizome.org/editorial/3238 it’s just a short film called ‘what the future sounded like’ but i think it’s interesting to think about how there was this negative reaction to early electronic music, in that, while it opened up the range of sounds to everything (unhindered by pitch, tone, etc), the early stuff was not considered ‘music’ because it was not structured, just as the people who played synthesizers were not referred to as ‘musicians’ (a la brian eno, who proudly called himself a ‘non-musician’).
not that i think flarf in particular is the beginning of some new way of writing. but i do think it is the first movement to really align itself with using the internet as a writing tool, rather than just a delivery system, in the same way that the early electronic pioneers were using tape and computers to make the music, rather than just a way to record it.
as someone who has never written flarf but appreciate the weirdness it creates, i thought i would share this rhizome post my friend did. http://rhizome.org/editorial/3238 it’s just a short film called ‘what the future sounded like’ but i think it’s interesting to think about how there was this negative reaction to early electronic music, in that, while it opened up the range of sounds to everything (unhindered by pitch, tone, etc), the early stuff was not considered ‘music’ because it was not structured, just as the people who played synthesizers were not referred to as ‘musicians’ (a la brian eno, who proudly called himself a ‘non-musician’).
not that i think flarf in particular is the beginning of some new way of writing. but i do think it is the first movement to really align itself with using the internet as a writing tool, rather than just a delivery system, in the same way that the early electronic pioneers were using tape and computers to make the music, rather than just a way to record it.
meh. comedy and poetry are almost the same thing anyway.
meh. comedy and poetry are almost the same thing anyway.
meh. comedy and poetry are almos
meh. comedy and poetry are almos
this statement is actually very truthful but i don’t think you realize it.
i think you are just being silly.
this statement is actually very truthful but i don’t think you realize it.
i think you are just being silly.
Yeah actually I agree with that.
Yeah actually I agree with that.
maybe this will make some eyes roll at the overwhelming number of times deleuze gets quoted on this blog, and of course it’s taken out of the context of a complex discussion about the nature of consumer enjoyment, but:
“Conforming to the meaning of the word ‘process,’ recording falls back on (se rabat sur) production, but the production of recording itself is produced by the production of production. Similarly, recording is followed by consumption, but the production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording. This is because something on the order of a subject can be discerned on the recording surface.”
– Deleuze & Guattari
maybe this will make some eyes roll at the overwhelming number of times deleuze gets quoted on this blog, and of course it’s taken out of the context of a complex discussion about the nature of consumer enjoyment, but:
“Conforming to the meaning of the word ‘process,’ recording falls back on (se rabat sur) production, but the production of recording itself is produced by the production of production. Similarly, recording is followed by consumption, but the production of consumption is produced in and through the production of recording. This is because something on the order of a subject can be discerned on the recording surface.”
– Deleuze & Guattari
no, i actually do kinda believe that.
no, i actually do kinda believe that.
yeah, stuff that has been around for a very long time sucks. rocks have been around for a long time. fuck rocks. also, atoms. who needs ’em?
yeah, stuff that has been around for a very long time sucks. rocks have been around for a long time. fuck rocks. also, atoms. who needs ’em?
I’m with Schylur Prinz on K. Silem Mohammed’s Sonnograms, altho’ they strike me as more conceptual than strict flarf, if the phrase “strict flarf” isn’t itself a flarf-like oxymoron gobbed up by my mental google, or gurgle, or, well, you know…. I like some flarf. I liked very much the latest Abraham Lincoln, KSM’s mag. Seen it?
I’m with Schylur Prinz on K. Silem Mohammed’s Sonnograms, altho’ they strike me as more conceptual than strict flarf, if the phrase “strict flarf” isn’t itself a flarf-like oxymoron gobbed up by my mental google, or gurgle, or, well, you know…. I like some flarf. I liked very much the latest Abraham Lincoln, KSM’s mag. Seen it?