Gigantisch gedicht vol klootzakken - Over flarf (2)

But like a crafty virus, the problem of language has mutated.

I've been composing a series of poems called "Fascist Fairytales." In one of them, a poem-play, Margaret Thatcher has a dialogue with The Sphinx, who is initially skeptical of her politics but eventually falls in love with her. It closes with a nuclear catastrophe, a loving embrace, and Thatcher's proclamation, "Bomb Turks, I'm in love!" Isn't that precisely what she meant?

Michael Magee, Mainstream (BlazeVOX, 2006)

Flarf canoniseert, althans die mening is de Amerikaanse dichter en criticus Joshua Corey toegedaan. Ik ben het niet met hem eens. Al is het alleen maar omdat van de onlangs verschenen belangrijke flarfbundel van Michael Magee, Mainstream (BlazeVOX, 2006), nog geen fatsoenlijke recensie is geschreven. K. Silem Mohammad merkte nog niet zo lang geleden op: 'I was just looking at some of my early Flarf work, and a couple of things occurred to me. One was that this early writing (and here I can only speak for myself, not for any of the other Flarfonauts) is simply too embarrassingly bad, no matter how intentional said badness might be, for it ever to leave the vaults and be seen in public.' Flarf is nog volop in ontwikkeling, beweegt, maar waar naartoe?

In dit tweede artikel over deze poëziestroming (het eerste artikel vindt u hier), die in elk geval in de V.S. stof doet opwaaien, presenteer ik twee vertalingen van mijn hand van nieuwe gedichten van K. Silem Mohammad en Anne Boyer, uit hun, vers van de pers, zojuist verschenen nieuwe chapbooks. Daarnaast laat ik Amerikaanse dichters, critici en een professor aan het woord, in de vorm van citaten, die tezamen een overzicht geven van heersende Amerikaanse opinies met betrekking tot flarf.

Waardeloze president

de nacht dat Reagan werd neergeschoten terwijl hij zijn vrouw bedroog
waren prostituees vrij en bestond er niet zo iets als herpes
man het was magisch

zeker we hebben een waardeloze president
maar het antwoord ligt niet in power ballades
'ik ben zo vrij daar anders over te denken' telt alleen tijdens hoefijzerwerpen

o.k. het is even aannemelijk dat het kind
een tweede Einstein kan worden en je herpes geeft
maar het is even aannemelijk dat het een vieze prostituee wordt

een slechte zaak, dat vind ik ook
metaforen zijn obsceen zoals het woord 'nicotinezuur'
mijn favoriete sport is honkbal

ik had mijn baas niet moeten vertellen dat ik vroeg naar huis moest
noch ben ik geïnteresseerd in het oplopen van soa's (wellicht op herpes na)
wat is Vicky's probleem? heb je 3 euro's?

ik ga pietepeuterige mooie-meisjes
voeten verviervoudigen tot
fractale spatader patronen

Amerikaanse dakdekkers
kunnen dus geen beton krijgen vanwege... herpes
uhhh, je dekt geen daken met beton

Bad President

the night Reagan got shot while cheating on his wife
prostitutes were free and there was no such thing as herpes
brother it was magical

sure we have a bad president
but the answer doesn't rest in power ballads
"I beg to differ" only counts in horseshoes

OK so it's equally likely that the baby
could grow into another Einstein and give you herpes
but it's equally likely that it could grow into a dirty prostitute

that is a bad thing, I agree
methaphors are dirty like the word "niacin"
my favorite sport is baseball

I shouldn't've told my boss I had to go home early
nor am I interested in getting STD's (except maybe herpes)
what is Vicky's problem? do you have 3 dollars?

I'm gonna quadruple itty-
bitty beautiful-girl feet into
fractal varicose vein patterns

so American roofers
can't get concrete because ... herpes
uhhh, you don't build roofs out of concrete

© K. Silem Mohammad, 'Bad President' uit: monsters (chapbook, Abraham Lincoln, 2006)
© vertaling Ton van 't Hof

flarf n. a style of poetry in which poems are formed by a collage of quasi-random, serendipitously found words and phrases; poems or a poem in the style. (Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary)

Flarf Poetry is an avant garde poetry movement of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Its first practitioners practiced an aesthetic dedicated to the exploration of 'the inappropriate' in all of its guises. Their method was to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems, plays, and other texts. (Wikipedia)

'I admire the subversive energy of the project, the daring of setting out to write deliberately bad poetry so as to put our received ideas of "the poetic" into question. It's become a genuine movement, and the evidence of this is that critics (like Dan Hoy) and assorted flarfists are now struggling to control its reception. This is the final gesture by which a movement or poet or technique becomes canonical, I think: after this it's all consolidation and textbooks. Which does not necessarily negate flarf's subversive potential; but I think the energy behind flarf, the desire to upset the apple-cart, is bound to move on toward something else now.' (Joshua Corey)

'As for the discussion that seems to be beginning about Lacan, I'm intrigued. Somehow I think Nicholas' sense that "what is interesting about Flarf is precisely what is going on under the childish surface: the deeper and thus darker oceanic undercurrents" is symptomatic. If I'm right, there is nothing going on under the surface of Flarf. Indeed, "under the surface" is the wrong and tellingly Freudian metaphor. Since Flarf has no putative ego (or is putatively egoless, if you prefer) there's no place to start to psychoanalyze it. It has no neuroses to go after, no dreams to interpret. There is just how it works (or breaks down) on the page. We need, if anything, a schizoanalysis of Flarf. It is anti-Oedipal on the face(lessness) of it.' (Alan DeNiro)

'While I haven't had the time to research any of the sources, my own general take (I'm hardly alone, of course) is that "aesthetically" Flarf's only rarely capable of more than warmed-over, quasi-nihilistic Dada high jinks, playing increasingly stale variations on a one-trick tune; "sociologically," and I mean this in objective spirit, it's shown itself to be a po-biz frat club with a healthy mean streak and a hyperactive snob complex. [...]

Maybe the problem was ever announcing "Flarf" as a concept, suggestive of a movement, etc., in the first place. Obviously, this is one of the problems with manifesto movements. Sloganeering, as flarf itself would have it, is definitely part of the problem. Flarf pieces object to having a "voice", which, if you want to be lent ears, is of utmost importance (e.g., "The world today is not like it was when the New Americans were running it, and that's the real problem.") It's like racism and bad grammar automatically lead to lower-class. [...]

Flarf, dead, alive, or trussed up for action clouds some of the current realities of race, immigration and class in the city, but Flarf will never "end" because too many of the flarfistes are at best mildly talented poets capable only of writing flarf, which is, all things considered, a fairly subtilized form of minstrelsy. Too many poets wish to be poets without struggling with poetry. Too many poets wish to be radical without facing their own wholly conditioned assumptions. If that's what you're into, go for it. Then go fuck yourself.' (Gary Sullivan)

'Flarf uses systems sometimes – Michael Magee’s My Angie Dickinson would seem to be the clearest instance – but more accurately utilizes Google sculpting in a variety of ways to come up with texts, and need not use systems to achieve its effects. [...] Flarf is interested in the idea of poetry as kitsch, as well as poetry as linguistic disaster – it’s desire to reach the “so bad it’s good” stage, what I think of as the Ed Wood effect, is not unrelated to some aspects of New York School heritage. [...] Flarf is interested in the non-literary as language – these poets mostly deploy anti-literary discourses, but do so with an aesthetic frame that is fine-tuned to the level of word and phrase. Uncreative Writing might see that as a residual form of creativity and as something to be stamped out. [...] Flarf came into existence because of the internet – its sense of what is possible here has been fueled by the ways that the web is reorganizing social space. Flarf is not centered around a single strong male personality, such as Bök or Goldsmith.' (Ron Silliman)

'Flarf and Other New Poetries (Dickinson College): "Flarf" is a new kind of contemporary poetry that is both controversial and, within avant-garde poetry circles, wildly popular. Flarf takes various forms, but most Flarf is (a) assembled from text fragments found through Google or other search-engine searches (this method of composition is sometimes called "Google-sculpting"), (b) satiric or comical in tone, and (c) irreverent and often ambitiously transgressive. Much Flarf is published in online magazines or on blogs devoted to avant-garde poetry. In this seminar we'll examine the intense critical debate around Flarf, with special attention to the place of Flarf in American letters. We'll address questions such as, What poetries are Flarf's antecedents? and Is Flarf the future of American poetry? We'll read the small (and rapidly growing) "canon" of Flarf texts, including K. Silem Mohammad's Deer Head Nation, Tony Tost's World Jelly, and Drew Gardner's Petroleum Hat. Students in the seminar will develop and maintain a blog which will become a journal of Flarf poetry and poetics; there, they'll carry on a discussion of the poetics of Flarf and they'll have an opportunity to post their own attempts at writing Flarf poems.' (Professor: Richard Abrams, Psychology)

'The advantage of the Google search text over the thoughts in my head is that I’m not limited to the small expanse of my own knowledge, cultural experience, vocabulary, moral values—I have access to things that would never come up in my own imagination.' (K. Silem Mohammad)

'Of course we didn’t think anyone would come. Flarf is, after all, just fucking around on the Internet. As Jordan Davis said in his first introduction -- it is a "widget," a made up thing, you aren’t supposed to believe in it, and also "Why are any of you here?" [...] A man stormed out at this during this play, muttering something like "I can’t stand this absurdist bullshit any longer." I suspect most of us were thrilled. I suspect most of us had waited so long for someone to actually storm out of a poetry-related event; this is much better than falling asleep at a poetry-related event or being quietly embarrassed for everyone involved.' (A draft: What happened at the Flarf Festival, Anne Boyer)

IS POËZIE VOOR KLOOTZAKKEN?

Het verband tussen poëzie en idiotie is er altijd geweest in handen van
bij gelegenheid pussies full of shit worden ze stilstaande ouwehoer hymnen over
kleuren geproduceerd door de andere mogelijkheid dat ze klootzakken
zouden kunnen zijn geweest---

OP ZICHZELF

werden dichters vriendelijker, vol chardonnay-nippende andere landen. Ja, de
fijne-poëzie pro's besteden tijd aan werken met hun geld, hun theorie
van het leven geopolitiek gebeiteld in het voorportaal van wie de wonden toebrengt
die doorzeuren vol van zulke ontroerende huldeblijken.

Tot nu toe kende niemand de Poëzie Flikkers. Snel daarna stapten ze over op de Poëzie
Homo's
(wat er van ze over is): de 'Ze-willen-alleen-maar-strijd'. Oh deze arrogante
klootzakken verteerd door irrationele poëzie terwijl de opvolgers aantrekkelijk
zijn maar ogenschijnlijk,

IK HEB EEN ZIEKTE.

Een ware poëziefan zou nooit gemeen zijn vanuit het gezichtspunt
van een trucker. Ik moet nog onderzoeken en nu en dan teruggaan naar full ass
chick individueel gezien zooo veel beter. Nou ja, fijne poëzie fotografie,
poëzieband fotografie,

GIGANTISCH GEDICHT VOL KLOOTZAKKEN---

er zou sprake van Inheemse Amerikaanse poëzie kunnen zijn geweest in een dorp in
Centraal Mexico. Zo ja, dan is het kut dat ik dat niet wist---maar ik zweer
dat het groots is geweest. Ik ben vastbesloten de poëzie te leren van het wonderlijke
team dat iedereen haatte omdat het vol pussies zat. Ik hoop dat je de fijne poëzie
bedoelt met de volledige degradatie van de poëzievorm, de jazz
handen en glimlach van een clown

POËZIE

want dan zou ik vragen dat als je me vindt ik een fulltime job heb en drie
kids.

IS POETRY FOR ASSHOLES?

The connection between poetry and idiocy has always been by
sometimes pussies full of shit they become still slinging anthems about
colors produced by the other possibility that they could have been
assholes---

AS IT IS,

poets'd get nicer, full of chardonnay-sipping other countries. Yes, the
fine-poetry pros spend time on work with their money, their theory
of life geopolitics chiseled in the entry hall of who inflicts the wounds
which linger full of such touching tributes.

Yet no one knew the Poetry Fags. Soon they shifted to the Poetry
Queers
(what's left of them): the "They-just-wanna-fights." Oh these arrogant
assholes consumed by unreasoning poetry while the replacements are
loveable but apparently,

I HAVE A DISEASE.

A true poetry fan would never be vicious from the trucker's
viewpoint. I have yet to explore and now and then go back to full ass
chick individual sooo much better. Oh well, fine poetry photography,
poetry band photography,

GIGANTIC POEM FULL OF ASSHOLES---

there could have been Native American poetry in a small town in
Central Mexico. If so, it sucks that I didn't know---but I swear it has
been great. I am determined to learn the poetry of the wondrous team
that everyone hated because it was full of pussies. I hope you mean the
fine poetry with the full scale debasement of the poetry form, the jazz
hands and clown smiles

POETRY

for then I would ask that if you find me I have a full time job and three
kids.

© Anne Boyer, 'Is Poetry For Assholes?' uit: 11. The deep (chapbook, eigen beheer, juni 2006)
© vertaling Ton van 't Hof

Comments

[Geplaatst door: der peter]

eigenlijk is dit - flarf - natuurlijk gewoon flauwekul. het principe snap ik wel, en juich dat zelfs toe, maar niet op deze manier. van luiheid een wetenschap maken met lang onderbouwde theorietjes; zolang er maar veel over geschreven wordt het vanzelf wel een keer wat.

wat is hier anders aan dan de cut-ups van Gysin en Burroughs? alleen de techniek?

zelfs die vond il maar matig maar biedt wel mogelijkheden als experiment en eye-opener.

de complete techniek kun je toch net zo goed laten varen en gewoon putten uit je onderbewuste. afstemmen, frequentie; verder niets en nog makkelijker ook...