the sighing of a failed flarist (meaning moi). I love serendipity, which is part of what informs flarf. that is, flarf depends on the finding. that discovery however is not as if a pure thing. flarfing writers use these benign oddities. the pure finding would be recording, which has its own beauty. funny, re flarf, I just flashed on Keats poking at Wordsworth. as a reader, when I start becoming conscious of the trick, or even that a trick is involved, I lose faith. that's my grind against Whitman. that this encomnpassing spirit that he felt becomes at times (sorry for screwy tenses, hard to talk about a timeless dead poet in sensible verb tenses) a shtick or at least a literary device. it's not fair to question his sincerity more than mine. the point is that we all as writers fall for devices. ways to return to the well, that well of opening and bright and intensely sudden. that is where Graves's White Goddess is so illuminating. the artist enjoys a natural high, but cannot sustain it. we're bound to deliver, say, 3 good poems in our lifetime, but what do we do the rest of the time? well, that time is process. it is exploration and experimentation and integration. it's also, to go Hollywood, booze and drugs (Sal Mineo copping a joint and instantly lost in the swelter of addiction), or just doing something completely different. I think flarf is a means of release. it allows the commanding worrier to be pushed aside, so that radiant voices may sound. which is a pretty yucky way of putting it. flarf is a process, but shouldn't be a stuck. Kasey acknowledges this in his interview with Tom Beckett, in noting that at some point the googling should stop. Dickinson produced a measured pile of poems, neatly counted by Harvard's corporate accountants. yet there she is fussing with her fascicles (which is perhps the dirtiest thing I will write today). not only that, she's intimating hypertext by incorporating alternative word choices into those fascicles. tell me that aint hip! I guess (and guess and guess) that I have yet to perceive exactly the larger project of Kasey and Charles (mes amis). which is not exactly their problem, is it? I say nothing against their commitment as artists, and only a fool would think that what I write here pierces anyone but myself. the sense of project is a varied thing, by my lights. Cantos and Maximus and A are obvious life projects. or Jordan Davis's 1,000,000 poem imperative. but you see it in Niedecker too, how she chipped away these darling gems from the grey starkness, intrepid dedication against a sullen backdrop. my distraction resides in knowing that C and K teach. well that's no crime. I'd love to've had the pleasure of their courses. the fear is the repetitive nature of teaching. taking the next class thru the marches. and that repetition (even tho, I know, each class taught is different by way of the different people attending, yet the curriculated structure...) could enter the process. but wait, aren't I considering flarf here? what's my damage? flarf is merely a procedure, to be used with lesser or greater facility. I think it can be a box. C and K do great service in poetry, world. I know that. I just feel a little dissatisfied, believing there is 'more to come'. well, this is my grand poetic statement, which about 5 people will read, and that's part of the problem too.