http://www.chicagoschoolofpoetics.com/category/blog/
Putting Down My Burger To Kick In the Door: An Appreciation of Flarf
Written by Sharon Mesmer on 31st July 2013
“1. The Big Ugly Thing That Totally Ruined Poetry
“Squid, nuthatch urethras, pizza kitties, unicorn boners and unicorn believers, 9/11 and the Iraq War: some basic ingredients of flarf, in case you hadn’t already noticed. Oh, and rage. Rage was definitely a factor. And Google — I almost forgot about Google! But Google seems, oddly, to have not been the most important thing about flarf from my perspective, and my perspective, twelve years on, is: flarf is dead, long live flarf.
“I thought I’d seen, over these twelve years, most of what already litters up the Interweb regarding flarf, but in researching dates and places for this piece I discovered, oy, more stuff! And I’m not even talking about the postings that sprung up, super fungus-like, after Ange Mlinko’s review of the new Norton postmodern in The Nation, which called out flarf as The Big Ugly Thing That Totally Ruined Poetry. (You might want to blame the invention of writing 3,000 or so years ago for that, Ange, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.) So many opinions, so many misapprehensions. But those misapprehensions proved valuable to us — like litmus tests of the misapprehending poets’ abilities to “read” beyond their own projections. After a while, though, the haters and their (perhaps purposeful) inability to contextualize got to be just plain annoying, this being the 21st century and all. So, what I’m going to try to do here is simplify, through the prism of my personal involvement, flarf’s arc, and hopefully note a few things that haven’t yet been noted, in the spirit of a eulogy.
“2. Eulogy?
“Eulogy? Why, yes, young flarf enthusiasts, and I know you’re out there. In case you missed it — and I’m positive you did — flarf’s funeral was the release reading for the Norton Postmodern at the New School on April 29th, at which five of the mere seven flarf poets included in the anthology read. Afterwards, in a cab, Nada Gordon and I remarked on how the reading had thrown into sharp relief the chasm between flarf and what had come before. The air in the New School’s Wollman Hall had become charged — or at least differently charged — when the flarf poets read. Unfortunately, the audience had dwindled down to half its original size by that time, but maybe the most interesting moments are the ones large groups of people never see. Like, for example, the Sex Pistols’ June 1976 Manchester concert, attended by, oh, maybe thirty people (some of whom, inspired by what they saw, went on to form Joy Division, The Smiths, Buzzcocks and The Fall). The Norton reading may have been the first time flarf had appeared in a public context alongside what had come before — correct me if I’m wrong here, fellow flarfs, but I don’t remember us ever reading alongside non-flarfs at that sort of multi-reader event. What was clear to both Nada and myself at that moment was the feeling that the anthology was a demarcation point, a threshold cleared, never again to be crossed.
“3. The Most Interesting Moments
“My personal involvement with flarf began in the spring of 2003 when Gary Sullivan, at a party at my apartment, asked if I wanted to be part of a smallish group of poets composing with Google search results. The ur-flarfs (Gary, Nada, Drew Gardner, Katie Degentesh, Kasey Mohammad, Mitch Highfill, Maria Damon and Jordan Davis) had been at it for a couple of years by then, and the first of the three “flarf festivals” had already taken place, in March 2002, at the Flying Saucer Café in Brooklyn (I was there, but didn’t read, as I wasn’t part of the list then). These excerpts from two of the announcements demonstrate pure old skool flarf:
(((Read it and marvel.)))
*********FIRST ANNUAL FLARF FESTIVAL**********
CHIMPANZEES DISSECT FROG, FIND KOAN RUBBLE
WAHID REPLACES ECONOMIC TEAM WITH GODZILLA
JAPAN MOURNS FLUFFY SPARKS
SNAKE EGG GHOST-WRITES HUMAN GENOME PROJECT GRANT
CALIFORNIA PASSES GAS
GOD REJECTS TREATY IN BLOW TO PUPPY EXPANSION
REV. JESSE JACKSON MODERATES SAME-SEX HARASSMENT OF CUTE BIRDS
MINNESOTA TEEN WINS ALLEGED GERBIL
CRAP AND DIARRHEA VOUCHERS
FAMILY, FANS PAY TRIBUTE TO BROADWAY’S “MUPPET PANTIES”
WIMBLETON SEEDING MAY NOT STOP FLUFFYNESS
OHIO MAN TEARS FACE OFF AFTER FALLING ON “OWN BOTTOM,” SAYS EMBARRASMENT WORSE THAN PAIN
Featuring: Mr. ?The-Pleasure-Is-All-Mine? | Piltdown Pal | Time to Re-read Siddhartha | —–> SPORK
THIS IS NOT A GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME!
Remember: you can sleep with Ostriches made of remote-controlled sailboats to get to the top if this doesn?t pan out!
______________________________________________
I have come to unite the skin with the underlying tissue! –Martian Luther King
∆∆∆
*********FIRST ANNUAL FLARF FESTIVAL**********
Fluffy buBBLes | pCoet!y | &phglem | Chaskopee’s | diET CHaskopee’s
“ggGGggrRRRoooAOOOARR!!” –Michael McClure, www.HippieSauce.com
“Mmm-hmm” –Chimpy!
Are you incredibly angry beyond any restraints to conceal this rage, so you may function as a milk fed person, tired, with giant blocks of frozen urine falling out of the sky?
The hard facts show that our economy has moved from the industrial age into the INFORMATION AGE and up into a goat’s ass. We were deer hunting and I jumped a nice Blacktail and it had trouble finding the target– here is a tip. Wrong Way: Put the rifle up to your employer’s golf orgasm …
READERS & LIVE ACTS INCLUDE:
BOOTY COW * MOOSY MOOSE * FLUFFY ‘n’ MENACHIM * MERYL RIVER * KING HOUDANGO * ALL NEW YORK OFFICE EMPLOYeES *
FRUTIY TOIRTISE PORCE * CHASKOPEE’s * UNIVERSITY DIAPER HEATERS * DIET CHASKOPEE’S * THE PEOPLE VS. GERTRUDE STEIN
∆∆∆
“When I asked around the list for some hard data on the early days (circa 2000-2002), I got a variety of interestingly different answers, reminiscent of that scene in “Gigi” where Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold chat tunefully about their first meeting: ah, yes, they remember it well . . . but all the details contradict. Further, as I tried to parse and re-weave the strands of information into some sort of clarifying narrative, I started feeling like I was writing a grad school paper, or Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The latter long ago morphed into something that made a lot of money for someone else, and the former should be written by an actual person in grad school. Plus, lacking a manifesto, it’s fitting that the origins of flarf remain fudgy….”
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