Flarf Sampler at Jacket

I always say I'm two years behind on everything in poetry, so I just read this flarf sampler at JACKET...

It's here...

http://jacketmagazine.com/30/index.shtml


Feature: Flarf

Gary Sullivan: Introduction

Anne Boyer: Three Poems: A Vindication of the Rights of Women / Mom’s Undiminished Lamb Jacket / Everything Nice Has a Crafted Satin Finish

Chickee Chickston: Three Poems: My Mary Oliver / Truckin’ Poem / My Kangaroo

Jordan Davis: Three poems: On an 87 Ford Taurus Left Taillight / Poems About Me / Pablo Escobar Shopping T-Shirt

Katie Degentesh: Three poems: I Loved My Father / No One Cares Much What Happens to You / I Sometimes Tease Animals

Benjamin Friedlander: Three Poems: Galang / Why Do Jews Reject Jesus as Their Savior? / When a Cop Sees a Black Woman

Drew Gardner: Three poems: I Am «So» Stupid / Norman Mailer / Dividing My Time

Nada Gordon: Three poems: Abnormal Discharge / Lick My Face / ‘A Gumby episode’

Rodney Koeneke: Three poems: The Adorno Corollary / Europe. Memory. Squid Parts. Grace. / Otto of Rose and Lavender

Michael Magee: Two excerpts: from My Angie Dickinson / Fascist Fairytales #6

Sharon Mesmer: Two poems: Juan Valdez Has a Little Juan Valdez (i.e., Energy Cannon) in His Pants / Squid Versus Assclown / At Princess Olga’s

K. Silem Mohammad: Three Poems: ‘The swans come hither in great numbers’ / Goldmine / Anti-Ass

Tim Peterson: Three Poems: Unmade Arts / From the Gecko / Biggest Dichter

Rod Smith: Three poems: What’s happening to My Bottom (part 3) / What is Happening to My Bottom? (s’appelle Charles the Bald) / The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being

Christina Strong: Two Poems: Don’t prufrock me! / You need a valium (or «bored with blogs»)

Gary Sullivan: Two plays: Gray Matter / PPL in a Depot

Tarzan: Tarzan Workshop


Okay, here's one reader's reception of these poems.

Cum grano salis. Or just cum.

I must have been there before some time back, or else I read some of these poems elsewhere because some were definitely familiar to me.

The problem with most of the poems is that they seemed to be trying desperately to be funny, and they weren't funny for this reader. They were more intellectuals trying to be funny kind of funny.

And that's rarely funny.

One really begins to think, maybe many poets really are just bored with life. Maybe poetry too easily devolves into a barroom klatsch after a certain age. Stock traders run together too. And construction workers. All those cows in The Far Side cartoons of old. Well, you get the idea.

Nobody say bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

The ones that I really enjoyed reading most were Nada's and Gary's work. Big surprise...I've been enjoying their writing since long before flarf existed...from Gary's Imaginary Writer's Survey in Talisman and his book How to Proceed in the Arts, to the fascinating work Nada was creating back when she edited the beautiful Aya and wrote poems inflected by her life in Japan.

Here, Nada's sensibility and luscious language stay themselves even as they adapt themselves to the syntactical and goofy deformations required by this party game, erm artistic movement.

Nada's poems collected here are funny, but they are also very sensuous, shapely, palate-pleasing language and imagery at the same time.

Her Gumby synopsis (the third poem in her selections) actually retains a feeling of Japanese poetry, oddly enough. At least it does for this reader, anyway.

I think it's all about the last line of that prose poem, which is rather Buddhist-transcendent even if it's taking place in the world of schlock Claymation.

Her first, strongly bodily poem (clearly generated by worried messages left on a message board where medical problems are shared and addressed) reads like a horrid meditation of what is entailed in physical incarnation...rather like a deva or eastern divinity mocking human frailty as she catalogues the various ingresses of mortality. Spiritual and corporeal ecdysiast does a striptease in which she is stripping off the flesh.

Some of the poems seemed to have in common a horror at the corporeal, this horror of incarnation, which might actually bespeak a humorous resonance with and cognizance of the fact that much of this writing is being generated by the bodiless. There might be egolessness-envy going on.

Gary Sullivan has always been a natural literary satirist, so one senses this movement isn't going to crimp him one bit. His contribution is very funny and very trenchant, which is what one expects of the guy by now. And he makes great visual art.

But the writers who are all sounding interchangeable? They clearly haven't found a way to "toggle" back and forth between their own styles and the "flarf" exigencies. That's my real disappointment with most of flarf.

Because if they don't have other styles or other-minded work, they could be easily replaced. Or they may just find themselves simply obviated, de trop, when the "flarf moment" is over.

Do you want flarf with that?

Are the flarfists going to "let in" every fifteen year old boy who thinks this is genius, and can clearly "hang" with this easy methodology?

(Maybe we are already post-flarf, or post-post-flarf and this question is already irrelevant. I don't live in New York or California.)

Or will they gingerly explain to any flarf aspirants about "branding," putting in time," "literary dues," and then gingerly remove his hand from their co-op shoulders?

I also thought Katie Degentish's suite of poems was really very good. Her poems seem to be making fun of the lyric, and they were post-lyric, yet they retained a sort of empathy, oddly enough. So they remained human even as they toggled past it.

Rodney Koenke's pieces weren't bad either and did have a cachet.

There are poets here whose non-flarf work I have enjoyed (Rod Smith, Jordan Davis) but their contributions here just didn't do it for me.

As funny goes, Sharon Mesmer's middle poem "Squid Versus Assclown" is hilarious. It reminded me a bit of Tao Lin actually! Maybe because of all his squid drawings, and because "assclown" seems like a word custom-made for Lin repetition.

Oh, and Tim Peterson's work was unavailable when I visited tonight, so I have no idea what he contributed. The link doesn't work any longer. Maybe somebody tell JACKET lol.

Unless he was Auf'ed from flarf or something.