some fascinating discussion of procedure by Jeff Harrison at Antic View, our interview blog (more soon to come). note how he devises an elegant way of minimizing author's desperation to control writing. I think by author here I mean id, but the point is to put that stern debater into the backseat. such procedures are just one way. one can do it other ways, meditative concentration, say, or utter distraction. people flinch at the seeming mechanical nature of using procedural methods to create texts but really, such people are just resisting. resistance is a natural reaction, but one should acknowledge one's resistance, try to understand the blockade. people have hung on terms like LANGUAGE and flarf, seemingly as a way to avoid reading or understanding the work itself. those terms are subfolders to the poetry folder, possible paths to take. I like working flarfistically. it exercises different muscles. my regular type-forth method goes linearly. my flarfish method moves more slowly, accretes and carves. yesterday I took a People magazine article on the Paul McCartney/Heather Mills Texas Divorce Match and worked it into a poem that retains almost nothing of that article. here is the poem (you can guess how the article goes, can't you?).

The Mills of Heather Rented the Same Agents
every time I make a report you do this to me
the enemy is everywhere across the street

in that window up that alley
life has been anything but an ipod.

I've always been in awe of the sky
I'm some B-boy cat that's over with

worry about my feet later Let's open up to Romans
Social class can influence who lives and who dies

Walking down the street I would bump into people
because I could only see from one side

My wife actually found out we were expecting
when I was in the hospital after my first episode

We've been first with other transitions too
Aw man We're not astronauts We're just asses

I just hope and pray that the Germans
we can wake up enough people

I'm probably the only person in America
who doesn't think I've had overwhelming lawsuits

* * * * *

I sent it thru Babelfish with the idea that I'd translate back into English myself. a quick cogitation told me that that would involve work, so I abandoned that idea. I then searched on the phrase 'said Paul'. what proved interestng got squeezed in here and there. then I shaped it into lines, then I deleted everything except the 'said Paul' stuff. shades of O'Hara and Oranges! the title, perhaps obviously, is a line from the People article translated from French back to English. the title is the only part of the piece retained from the original article, everything else got obliterated. somehow, it still contains an essence of Paul, Heather and People mag. even tho all words in it are found things, I made many decisions in creating this text. what I love about flarf, and what perhaps makes some people uneasy, is the pure voices that come thru. tho their contexts have changed, you hear the voices of Others, in all their oddity, difference, collision and helplessness. those voices can be so beautiful and unnerving. the writer of flarf, and the reader, Walt Whitmanly comprise those voices. what is poetry but a touching tenderness compelled towards the world? I use flarf here as an illustration. however one attains that touching tenderness is how poetry is made. difference is okay, and in fact, what worries you is what's most interesting.