Gary Sullivan ruminates on flarf. he did Google and Technorati searches to see who's saying what and how much about flarf. now, this gives a whack sense of the subject, because it is limited to online sources. one notes, for instance, that bloggers get more notice than non-bloggers, even among the Flarf listers (Rodney Koenerke has much greater involvement in flarf than do I, but he's listed 1/10th of the times that I am. Gary brings up several good points. one being that the flarf list consists of a lot of farking around. poets at play. which doesn't undermine the seriousness of anyone's efforts. I know I post lots of stuff for the sake of their being my latest experiement. Gary also notes the typical hardening of the art-eries regarding flarf: people theorizing and formalizing it. I'm late to flarf per se, tho I've done similar messin' around, but I can see the same attempt to define that went on with LANGUAGE poetry. the flarfers, however, aren't doing the same self-explanation as did the LANGUAGE writers. I wouldn't want to use the word flarf much in criticism, because it's a loaded term, loaded in the sense that it can be totally empty, or overly malleable, just as the L-word often is. really excellent writers are associated with flarf, really adventurous, too. anyway, in writing this, I add to my flarf count, which is my way to the empyrean.