Back in the Thick of It…

So, we’ve made it to Buffalo. The house is almost unpacked. The weather is gorgeous. And today we finally got plugged back in to the internet, ironically allowing me to catch up on the blogosphere and Dale Smith’s “slopo” movement.

Much to think about and respond to there, but I’ll do it on my own blog rather than haunt the comments box at Dale’s, for now.

After the initial post, on our way out of town at the end of June, I quickly commented and mentioned flarf as an interesting phenomenon but one that I wasn’t sure works as poetry, comparing it to a “canary in the coal mine of language.”

Today, Dale linked to a couple-years-old interview with Gary Sullivan that I just quickly read, illuminating for the way it explicates some of the groundwork behind much of the flarf movement. I’m also grateful that it links to the text of Gary’s play PPL in a Depot, which I saw produced several years ago at the Poets’ Theater in San Francisco.

That play was one of the more compelling flarf productions that I’ve seen, and I especially recall the pathos of the cop character — played by K. Silem Mohammad — reciting an elegy for Allen Ginsberg just before the final curtain (the poem, like all the text in the play, was presumably found via Google on the internet).

What made the moment so moving is the same thing that infuses flarf with such potential: like a bottle washing up on shore with a message tucked inside, removed from its original context and made anonymous by the magical power of the web, the poem had a sort of mysterious longing about it, almost an Eros, a lack that I couldn’t help responding to. For a moment I was connected via the genuine emotion of the elegy with whoever wrote it and tucked it into that bottle — and the mysterious lack was perhaps heightened by the fact that the author did not intend to set it adrift in this way.

(Reading the poem again in Gary’s play, it’s actually quite good in a Frank O’Hara sort of way, if a bit more straightforward than one of his elegies.)

The problem is that for me, flarf so rarely lives up to this kind of moment. More often it’s the merely funny or inane, the dead wood of modern language, that finds its way into the poems, which has its own kind of pathos, but not one that I rush to in poetry. Certainly that’s because, as Gary mentions, flarf doesn’t make value distinctions in terms of content. But it also doesn’t make it particularly moving or memorable, two qualities I do seek out when I turn to poetry.

One thing I found interesting in Gary’s interview was his point about “de-centralized subjectivity” as a conscious strategy of flarfers, a response to the Poetic “I” that Gary identifies as a “Romantic notion,” one that seems to have dominated in poetry for at least a century or two. He mentions fiction writers as authors who traditionally work with “multiple subjectivities,” while for poets it’s “still somewhat radical.”

In reality I see the idea of multiple subjectivities — whether in one work or over the course of many poems or books — as not radical at all, and in fact a fairly common approach throughout literary history, up to and including the Romantic era. No need to get into a laundry list here, but just to mention a poet I’ve been concerned with lately, surely no one confused Blake with one of the Angels of his great prophesies, and even his earlier poems consisted of dialogues between multiple voices espousing totally different viewpoints.

One might say that it was only with the rise of the novel and the ceding of narrative territory to fiction that poetry became more and more lyric and subjective, less and less willing to experiment with form and viewpoint, until we are faced with a situation that Gary is quite right in identifying: Fiction writers are the great creators of characters and voices and multiple subjects in our literary landscape.

But not all poets — not even modern poets — have accepted this, and flarf is not alone in challenging the lyric norm. I’m not sure if that’s what Gary was asserting in the interview, but from the limited read offered it’s easy to take it that way. And this (the perception of one form or school as the superior or ONLY response to perceived norms) may be one edge of the wedge that’s continually driven between various groups.

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6 Responses to Back in the Thick of It…

  1. Jordan says:

    Hi David. Got the new Kadar Koli and I look forward to reading it.

    Thanks for this note, which crystallizes exactly what I like so much about flarf — its lack of tension around failure. (I mean, they keep *me* around.) This isn’t to say flarf is entirely free of gatekeeping tendencies, admittedly. But what’s the point. The point isn’t to demonstrate competence in a given form (or allegiance to a shrineful of ancestors) it’s to be as gloriously incompetent as possible.

    Have you ever played reverse tic-tac-toe? The point of the game is to force the other player to connect three boxes without connecting three yourself.

    It ought to go without saying that I am speaking for myself and not for flarf, but just so you know, I’m speaking for myself. I’ve heard a lot of resistance to the worst-thought-best-thought description of flarf.

  2. dhadbawnik says:

    Jordan–

    thanks for your note, and I do hope you enjoy the new issue.

    some more thoughts that have been brewing for me:

    1) to say that flarf poems rarely live up to “these kinds of moments,” i.e. the climax of gary’s play, is perhaps to say that poetry in general doesn’t live up to its very best lines / moments etc.

    but given a strategy that invites the best and the worst of what’s floating around language-wise, i wonder if it’s even possible to aim for such moments, and i wonder what flarfers would have to say about that. to what extent is the onus on the hearer / reader to accept the text as it comes, and is it fair of me to expect the sort of charge described above?

    obviously — as with so many poetic approaches — spicer’s “practice of the outside” comes to mind — you don’t sit down with the idea of finding something like the ginsberg poem to really pop the audience with. that’s part of the shock of it — that it was so random and out of context. i suppose it’s the age-old question of whether i want to wade through all the bad stuff (the “glorious incompetence,” perhaps) to unearth these gems.

    what constitutes a successful flarf poem?

    2) from my limited experience of flarf and what i gleaned from gary’s interview, i understand how flarf does represent a radical project of “multiple subjectivities” that’s different from other practices out there. and that’s without taking into account the “collective” aspect, which is about as mysterious to me as freemasonry. as a great admirer of collage and appropriation, i’m most interested in this. i just don’t think it’s unique.

    and again i wonder if it represents an extreme that simply doesn’t always work as poetry. jordan notes the “lack of tension around failure,” and i greatly admire the willingness to be open and connect and create. but is there a point where the critical, shaping “I” gets too washed away in the process? I suppose time will be the great editor of this stuff, as with most poetries.

    probably these are questions that have long ago been posed and addressed on various listservs. this is just me thinking out loud, in response to the mini-conflagration in dale’s comments box. but any enlightening / enlightened responses would be most welcome.

  3. Jordan says:

    > probably these are questions that have long ago been posed and addressed on various listservs.

    Oh I doubt it.

    > what constitutes a successful flarf poem?

    There be monsters.

    > i wonder if it’s even possible to aim for such moments,

    Sure it is. Even more possible to shoot the barn and draw a bullseye around the hole.

  4. Jordan says:

    David –

    Thinking more about your observation that Gary’s (anybody’s) assertions about flarf (any group concept) drive an excluding wedge. Goodness knows most of the silly behavior of any poet arises from the perfectly natural perception of being excluded — from publishing, giving readings, conversation — by nearly every other poet at some time or other.

    Instead of “innocent until proven guilty” we work from a presumption that, until they’ve praised us, published us, and invited us to headline at their stadiums, other poets hate us and want our work to vanish.

    There’s something to that presumption, by the way. Most poets I’ve talked to *do* populate the category of work-that-shouldn’t-exist. Most of the time, it’s work that, aside from certain surface distinctions, is nearly identical to the poet’s own work.

    More to say, but I better mull it over and save it for an essay. Thanks for speaking up. More, please.

  5. dhadbawnik says:

    Jordan–

    I don’t think Gary’s comments ALONE are exclusive — only that they could easily be taken that way given the lack of context / discussion of other literary movements and strategies. It takes two to tango.

    Having lived in the bay area for about 7-8 years, i have to say that folks there were by and large very generous and inclusive, allowing a neophyte poet like me access to reading series and other events and publications. for that, i will always be grateful.

    however, having grown up as a person and poet, it would be naive not to see the group dynamics at work there and elsewhere. i don’t begrudge anyone their affinities and fruitful connections and exchanges with other poets. poets are a paranoid lot, as you indicate, and it’s much easier to give rein to the paranoia and feel excluded than admit that you or your poetry isn’t up to snuff. i’ve been guilty of that, sure.

    but i’ve also seen evidence of grudge-holding and character attacks clearly aimed at damaging reputations and “careers,” such as they are, much of it driven by obscure poetic loyalties that to my eye seem more personality-based than anything else. another way of saying, as you indicate, it rarely has to do with the actual work.

    many thoughts, no conclusions here. i can rail against the evils of groups of poets, even as i have my own poet-friends and look forward to making more here in buffalo. and i can admire someone like blake, who stood completely outside such groups, even as i doubt i could be crazy or strong enough to do that myself.

  6. Jordan says:

    Isn’t it interesting that so little of the poetry of the last hundred years is about group dynamics? For that work we have to look to the novelists — loners!

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