Comments on: Freedom in Flarf

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:42:12 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, Amy. Here’s to the enlightenment through lame-ass efforts.

By: amy

amy — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:39:48 +0000

Ha! It sounds like Howard might want to read Barthes’ Death of the Author — I don’t really get any credit for Flarf ultimately, since I merely responded to some silly declarations and made a lame ass effort to try out the form too!

xo, Howard! You’re just as on it as the next guy…

Amy

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 05:13:04 +0000

Well, what I found is that trying hard to be bad can be a useful exercise. Knowing what’s bad actually helps me know what’s good. Plus, as Marvin Bell once said (I’m paraphrasing), it’s often not the bad stuff that needs to be cut out to make a poem good – but amplified and improved to ultimately make the poem actually great.

By: jenni

jenni — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 04:48:22 +0000

i don’t get flarf. i don’t get why people would even waste their time. to me, it’s not even worth thinking about. but hey, i’m a bitch! LOL

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:47:52 +0000

Hey Pearl – nice to “see” you again. Love it when it turns out others have come to similar tactics regarding the inner game of writing (or living, or whatever). Especially someone like Abe. Hope you are well.

By: Pearl

Pearl — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:44:12 +0000

Yes, reading the Amy King post comments helped.

By: Pearl

Pearl — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:28:25 +0000

Thanks for that intro. I couldn’t really get under flarf either but I’m closer.

Interesting concept. Neat Abe story.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:10:16 +0000

Collin, I looked up elitist in the dictionary – and there you were, with a feather pen in hand, writing on a parchment scroll!

Seriously, I go analog myself when it comes to poems, and get enough spam in my inbox as it is. I guess just writing flarf in the sense of “trying to be so bad it’s good” (sans the Googling) was a kind of liberating experience for me.

By: Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:00:40 +0000

Call me “old-fashioned” (the horror…the horror), but I’ve never been able to get into the whole flarf movement. Some of it is so bad it’s hilarious, but trolling Google for random spam and words just isn’t my idea of fun. I’m trying to spend more time away from the computer when I’m writing poetry these days. I’ve actually gone back to writing first drafts in a notebook. I’m positively retro at this point…and probably an elitist snob.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 02:54:42 +0000

p.s. and continuing in the theme of hat-tips, I gotta give it to this site:

http://mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com/

which not only cranks out flarf (and flarf video) but thereby manages to attract spambots in droves. Could this be flarfetic justice?

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:49:37 +0000

Hiya Howard,

Thanks for stopping by. I read your post when it came out last month (ah, the wonders of RSS) and definitely enjoyed it enough to revisit it today (thanks to Google BlogSearch).

So, your post certainly inspired my thoughts as much as everything else rattling around in my subconscious over the last month, and thanks for that. The experience that catalyzed my post, above (can one rant in approbation?), was a discussion on Amy King’s blog and my experience of (finally) actually trying out the form.

Thanks also for the peek you provide, through your blog, into the that flagship poetry small press.

VorwÃ¤rts,
Robert

By: howard junker

howard junker — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:09:14 +0000

dude:

it would have been, and still could be, nice if you would acknowledge your flarf rant as being inspired, however distantly, by my post of 16 Feb.

adelante,
howard