tributary

if it's all right with you, I point to Youtube, aka Cultural Millstone (but natheless), for a look at Duane Allman. something visceral for me as he gets down to the lowest part of the guitar's neck. sometimes, I feel like my poetry does that. but I cannot tell you that.

sometimes, as Shanna does, you just gotta explain things. in her case, to divert the impression that For Girls is flarf. as a former flarf list denizen, I saw Shanna's flarfistic expressions, hot off the grill. as she notes, flarf isn't a technique but an attitude. and part of the attitude, I wot, is the stolen moment, perhaps-at-work-goof-off of/with language, often reactive and timely. Shanna's contributions were always good, or let's just be honest to say, mine weren't. not in the quick fun roisterous way that signals flarf. I always laboured at flarfy expressions, which is wholly out of key, both to flarf qua flarf, and to my own speed mode. I'm saying that those skittering expressions that Shanna wrote presumably quickly at work are not the same as in her book, tho that is not to deny the writerliness of either faction of her enterprise. and I think the distinction, or the sense of wider palette, if that's a legit image to offer, is useful, or worth considering. the play of single poems versus the pathfinding program of a book. Girls is a book, written, in its way, as a whole, or gathered as a larger installation. I like that Shanna steps to the fore of the proscenium to indicate her own conception, and not just leave it to the reader's assumptions. not to say that any of this can't be argued and such. I have my apparently daunting 1000 page Days Poem, which I view as an inviting variety but I think readership (thou minusculeness) sees as a resistant block. it is not. it is not too many words, it is words, living values, in moments. how many words does each moment contain? or, what's the right number of words for each moment? I want to defend Days Poem as a reading experience, and that the parametre of page count is merely descriptive, not essential. having read For Girls, I know that it is not flarf, tho the flarfy influence can be safely spoken of. anyway, For Girls lives in its own distinction.