another great interview by Tom Beckett tho you don't need me to tell you. Tom's interviews are intelligent, intellectual, crisp and not rushed. Kasey brings a great, comprehensive critical voice in these days. I don't know how the flarfists get such results as they do, I mean their Google searches seem much richer than mine. the pop side of flarf wears on me, I find. we get pop culture up the wazoo like it or not as it is. giving today's buzz of interest the privilege of serious encounter produces a sameness, at least to my ear. Alan Sondheim, in a Wryting's post, astutely likens the grand dialogues in Boswell's Johnson (oops, there's a 2nd entendre for all to see, aint there?) to the email chatter on listservs. the Google well is full of just that chatter. and it is important that we acknowledge that chatter. see it as chatter. the edge dipping into that chatter seems a little worn at this point. I guess I have a need to see a project. I feel the intensity of Kasey's craftsmanship, his careful ear for the sound and furry (haha), but also somehow sense him being boxed in. I feel similarly about Charles Bernstein. I wonder if it isn't the academic climate. it's not like either is turning into Harold Bloom. but they both seem to remain in the precincts of the academic churn, which is to say, the sea warms, algae rises, the cycle begins again. I sound like I'm flunking Kasey, having written similar downers here previously. the possibilities are that I'm on to something or missing the boat completely. I recall no negative words written about Kasey, which is a wonder. I don't want to dislike Kasey's poetry (and I don't, just wary that it might be flashing), certainly his work brings carloads of energy and humour. I just don't get enough aliment from his work, whether it's for lack of digestive enzymes on my part, or a nutritional lack on his. when he's on with his blog, he's a great lesson of beaming. but, as I have noted before, he can also be smarmy. there. I know this is all what the fuck. I'm not taking potshots, and even if I were, who would care? I'm just posting up in the paint, trying to figure out the patterns that the people around me are running.