oh hi. I took a poem by Amy Lowell called The Green Bowl, and performed (what I think are) flarf procedures on it. I proposed this to the Flarf List as an exercise, so real flarfists also done their stuff. I chose Lowell just because I wanted a text pre-20th century. I don't exactly like Lowell, she's hopeful about her poetry in ways that are both irritating and distracting (common disease, I admit). voici est la poème:


The Green Bowl

This little bowl is eating all the
fish food you can hold like a
mossy pool she had dived in
many decades past in a Spring
wood classed as a semi-natural
ancient woodland, where dogtooth
violets grow well and stay
healthy, and the number of
children who are overweight
produces abundant flowers that
contribute to class when they
get the right amount of light. Nodding
in chequered sunshine of the trees is
just the right amount of God, and the right
amount of RAM, for your new pet will soon
manifest the right amount of sand,
securing the right amount of space for
your growing business seminars. A
quiet place, still, with the sound effect
of another frog heralding the arrival of
significant new talents. Tuesday Weld, though
unseen, is effective as her slightly endless
song and murmur of never resting on the
firing pin when a cartridge is
chambered. I thought that the pain would
disappear after a while, but it hasnt. I
thought she'd get over it. 'twas winter,
Roger, when you made this in Step 3,
but the coming Spring season for
the railways will guide your eager
hand and round the edge you will fashion
green leaves of Summer callin' me home
(Baby knows I’ve been a proper chalice
made to hold the shy and little events between
three and ten seconds long in the woods). and here
they will forget their sad olive trees in order to
pleasure this circle of their setting. once more
they will dream of taking a step to
tackle the running back; they will dream
that they spit out a black substance
they hear wandering through lofty trees; and
they will dream of walking into a
bookshop and seeing their novel
displayed prominently next to the
sun smiling between the leaves.


* * * * *

honest to god, I don't know how Gary Sullivan, Kasey Mohammad et al. get such rich results. something in the way they do their searches. not even mentioning the way they use the material. I found the process labourious, tho compelling. it didn't entirely feel like my writing, tho I would have no problem claiming the above as 'mine'.I clove pretty carefully to the found texts as given, but I don't suppose the rules committee insists on this. and I found myself wanting to stay on the narrative trail, even if the narrative is fractured. I don't do a lot of exercises of this nature but find worth in them, ifonly as reminder of possibilities.