3 months ago I downloaded Mark Young's ebook Betabet, which I have only recently begun to read. the book is a lovely intersection of. of what? it seems like of the personal and the political. I've been reading Lorine Niedecker lately, wherein a similar intersection occurs. in neither case is the personal congested with advert. nor is the political tempered by aught but a looking stance. which is to say, there is no inflation of these qualities. both work with a rather stern measure, lines meted out, so to say. I've been reading Creeley lately too, those impossibly thoughtful lines that have burned themselves into my brain (I mean the measure of those lines). all three are so firm and intent on those short unbreakable lines that they made. Mark has been among the champions, if that's the right word, of hay(na)ku, a simple poetic form that insists on a icy crisp measure. I'm fascinated by this. the point is not simple dogmatic counting with hay(na)ku, nor the certainty of the line by the 3 writers. haul it back to Olson, and that curious sense of breath that he tried to make clear. a monadic feeling of the line. I find disjunction is a means of finding the monadic, or even exploiting it. the sternly formed lines of the writers here under discussion are isolations of sense, of seeing. the disjunctions that I use assert similarly. I work most often within the context of the sentence, so the disjunctions are hard stopping places and adjustments. what I see in Mark Young's work (and the others I mention) is burnt off completeness. the fluttery extra stuff is made gone. I appreciate this turn away from the egoistic. I don't know why I have to be so tortured trying to write of this. I recommend Betabet. available also as POD. btw, I discovered I have to print things out if I want to read them well.

I know I meant to link to Shanna Compmton's DIY ages ago, but seems like I didn't. the gist: make your own book. if the residents of the empyrean won't do the work, it's still pub if you do it. hand them out, sell them for bundles, quit complaining.

by Erin: Mowgli en fuego

  

amend that epiphany:

flarf is theatrical

voices are inhabited, Dustin Hoffman isn't really Tootsie...

aw gee,it's always a debate of what versus what. I'm old, so I met LANGUAGE poetry at the beginning. it was a bump in the road that made me curious. what exactly was jostling me? in my investigation I learned a lot, got cramped and bullied, worked my way thru to some Bramhall distinction of the poetic process. flarf qua flarf belongs to a handful of people. these people (shall I name them?) have done their own working thru. it's not just about Google, it's not just about bad taste. that handful of people found an engine that they decided they could use. this is pretty normal art type stuff. the way people have reacted is so Rolling Stone magazine. or god damn Time. binaries, and social compotes, and ideological mayhem. Kent Johnson: tie the head on straight!. elevation of side issues, personality spats, trenchant dicta: poetry burns this stuff for breakfast. I'm on the flarf list, I see flarf happening in real time, I add to the pile, it's just association with the language. there's a lot of grabbing, punching and confusion in the scrum. then the ball is freed. watch the ball, damn it!

flarf is theatre

Lanny Quarles copped this poem by SHeila Murphy from the Wryting list. is that the best title just about ever?

  

  

I got hooked by University of California Press's bonzo sale, to wit:

Creeley's Collected--30 years missing from the real collection, but it includes several books I don't have, and inspires me to go back to this source!!!

Paul Klee's diaries--a favourite painter, and I love journals

Lorine Niedecker's collected--she's wonderful, really. you might think of her as complementary to Zukofsky, and there's something to that, but there's something about surviving in her work, finding a voice despite impossibleness. I just happened on this nifty nugget:

Van Gogh could see
twenty-seven varieties
of black
in cap-
italism

Olson's collected prose--he's always been a college for me, and tho I have much of the stuff here, I didn't have Call Me Ishmael

complete posthumous poetry of Cesar Vallejo (Eshleman/Barcia)--Vallejo has always interested me but I haven't read a great deal. am I right in thinking Spanish translations are often terrible? maybe I associate all Spanish translations with Robert Bly. I feel I can trust Eshleman to some extent, at least. this is by no means an expert opinion.

Juliana Spahr's This Connection of Everyone with Lungs--courtesy Jack Kimball's enthusiasm (I seem to be stalking Jack, don't I?). I was pulled in immediately. powerful reaction to 9/11.

Lenin Body Surfs for Certain

Lenin groaned on the way to new groaning, which was the same as writing home from the war inside. that war—labeled Iraq with pictures of Iran—shows you just how much a little might be. A little fit for saying how the waves bend over certain experiments in human nature, letting force imply a coarse determination. But what, pray tell, is Lenin's best relation to current events? He's sworn to uphold the letter of grey branches in a plush circumstance of rain. Isn't that a dilly, where dilly means something extended, and where the verb to be needs a way to sprout future entanglements. Can this sort of language foster more brunt along the lines of asking wedded couples to strike the ground with every pledge? Can we see thru such social constant while still looking for Anne Frank? Wasn't Anne Frank a retard, or dork, or just fairly unattractive? I keep forgetting. Lenin, for sure, was not charming at all: he couldn't endure the fees. He just laid out a plump nostrum, and the singers began. That singing finished Anne Frank. Her part was worn. We still love Anne, and Lenin's awful nice in gabardine. More tunes can be relayed, as we circle investment on the map. That's our next target of approximation. To simulate is to cool the project to the point of almost current effect. Our program begins now.

I 1st looked at Jack's post noted below with my Blog Scan(tm) glasses on, and phrases leapt out. that was my 1st excitement. having read it thru, in order, I'll call it a tour-de-force. the piece is well wound up. it is satiric, roman-a-cleffy (I surmise, tho I don't hold the clef), but where the thing goes oblique from that is where that I find the most interest. its hyped-up Hollywood energy goes athwart language gone wry as well as awry. a tussle of sequencing, bombardment, and humanness proves a piece of the puzzle. Jack's looking at a certain pizzazziness that's been providing comfort for well too long. monadic self-congratulation in crowds secures the well-featured world. really impressive.

I went to the trouble of reformatting Jack's recent pieces into chronological order. worth doing. maybe Blogger someday will make it easy to go old to new, or maybe I gots to learn how myself...

I've just scanned this so far but Jack's got something totally wtf as the youngest member of this household might put it.

Really Bad Movies reminded me of Plan 9 from Outer Space. I used to own the tape but that went gone. ah, but I searched the library network and bingo. so Beth and I watched it yesterday, Beth for the 1st time. too much is said about how bad it is. it sure is amateurish. but it also has a weird integrity. Wood was really serious ablut what he was doing. and the movie is oddly compelling, despite bad everything. right off the bat, with bizzaro Criswell, these sterling words are voiced: future events such as these shall be with us in the future. hmm, yes, I think I see what you mean. how about the line the detective gets to speak: Clay is dead--murdered--and somebody is responsible. or the dialogue in which Jeff tells his wife that he saw a flying saucer, and she replies, flying saucers! you mean the kind from up there? and Jeff answers, yes, or their counterpart. huhn??? and this plan 9, in which the dead are risen to, well, it's like, uh, somehow this'll help. the dialogue seems quite random, like Wood was listening to a bunch of movies or conversations as he wrote. quite flarfy, really. I've compared Plan 9 to Coppola's Dracula. of course Coppola had an enormous budget, and he knows cinematography. which just means the lameness of that movie are the more appalling. I don't think Dracula is more compelling to watch than Plan 9. you don't get cops scratching their heads with their revolvers in Dracula, that's for darn sure. nor flying hubcaps neither.

poem by Lanny Quarles

From the Ragged Breasts of Onlookers

Anne Frankensteinlageryetimedusaqualung
whose dick chaineys swing like welks
whose bush is putrid banana slugs
whose colon pals are luminous barnacle sausages
stuffed with Volkswagen assclowns with squidbeard mudra-applets
whose ivory tower moustache tentacles (sojourn, sojourn!)
are like a jungle gem for jaded jingles jangling in their angling oogles

O Doktor Jekyll-jelly-doom Breasted Concentration Camp
you genre of queer hyena soccer hooliganeshas (robo-retards!)
hoboing amongsth sad veteran's of psyd-chic Vars,

Ye Thrice Bullock'd Buskers of
THE NEW EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN (Crayon Redeemer Armor made of Heiligenacht naughty snakes!)
come lately from your Nabi-Nazi-hutch-puch-punchinutella smeared tribadic thropsiers
to dangle your labial petticoat instruction manuals
into my motley-brained fool's paradise

What have YOU to offer ME~!

I was there when Granada moored its Blind Emily
Dick-in-Sun to the Logan's Run Fatima Hand
so holy red jew'ld
wrapped in candied hogsnout and bitter gut-lace,
so fete-shrimp'd for the horking pons

O ye Tiny Gnaouan biscuit peddlers
whom stars love
I cannot fry Mohammad in effigy
in Jimmy Dean
as somebody has put a delete key squarely in the forehead
of your absent faith

Flibbigibbeted in Direct Mailings!

O dry waterless tongue of exquisite beauty!

so faithful to Heather LockLear
so certain of her G-spot
and S-spot
and D-spont:

God, I am in your way.
Push me aside, and make this day,
this
Chubby Checker Istanbul Strip Club
with Anne Frankenstein Yeti Medusa Aqualung hash boys
painted by Runnabeegle "Bosch-und-Loam" Marais..

noticed last night that the door was open, and the dog... he's part German shepherd and part husky and that means he wants to see what's over there, and there, and there... that put me in a panic and I called the troops. while Beth and I scurried about, Erin just ran out barefoot. by the time I got out, Erin was carrying Brownie (that's Next County Brownie). Brownie had ventured into a particularly muddy area, which I didn't realize until Erin put him down and the dog ran inside and with muddy feet, anointing the carpet wonderfully. oh the jolly fun. Brownie knows exactly how to get home, his homing sense is perfect, it's just a matter of when. under previous ownership, his owner found him inside a restaurant dumpster, having the time of his life. one time I ran to the nearby farm for some dinner essential and noticed by the side of the road this very dog. just sitting there? I wasn't aware that he'd snuck out. usually in such circs and runs away, just to make the experience so much more fun, but this time he remained where he was. when I got up to him, I saw a gash in his shoulder, and thought he'd been in a fight, unlikely as that would be. then I saw that he favoured a leg. then I saw that that leg dangled. okay, so he'd gotten hit by a car. he was patched up expensively, complete with splint. one week later, he espied an open door and sure enough, off he limped. luckily Beth was out there to corral him. an earlier adventure occurred over the 4th of July weekend. I tied him outside not realizing that his line was unanchored. so he wandered off per orders. I ran around looking for him. I went to neighbouring homes to get permission to look in their yards but because of the holiday, no one was around. so I was skulking about like a criminal. finally I thought I heard something nearby. a neighbour has a rabbit hutch and there I found the arch criminal. he had wrapped the line that was still attached to him around the leg of the hutch. he stared at the unavailable rabbits and yipped forlornly. when he saw me, there was a look of relief, as in, finally some help getting the rabbits. so there's some of my dog adventures, read 'em and weep.

Lenin Body Surfs for Certain

Lenin groaned on the way to new groaning, which was he same as writing home from the war inside. that war—labeled Iraq with pictures of Iran—shows you just how much a little might be. A little fit for saying how the waves bend over certain experiments in human nature, letting force imply a coarse determination. But what, pray tell, is Lenin's best relation to current events? He's sworn to uphold the letter of grey branches in a plush circumstance of rain. Isn't that a dilly, where dilly means something extended, and where the verb to be needs a way to sprout future entanglements. Can this sort of language foster more brunt along the lines of asking wedded couples to strike the ground with every pledge? Can we see thru such social constant while still looking for Anne Frank? Wasn't Anne Frank a retard, or dork, or just fairly unattractive? I keep forgetting. Lenin, for sure, was not charming at all: he couldn't endure the fees. He just laid out a plump nostrum, and the singers began. That singing finished Anne Frank. Her part was worn. We still love Anne, and Lenin's awful nice in gabardine. More tunes can be relayed, as we circle investment on the map. That's our next target of approximation. To simulate is to cool the project to the point of almost current effect. Our program begins now.

I neglected an important detail from yesterday. I wandered off to a quiet part of the student union, where I found vending machines. one offered ice cream, those crappy items you might find in an ice cream truck. of course I had to have one. having standards, I chose the least crappy of those crappy ice creams. after accepting my money the machine slowly (that is to say, with building anticipation) positioned this black tube above the appropriate bin. I was wondering how it would collect the ice cream then realized that that tube was a vacuum cleaner and would grasp the ice cream that way. oh lordy, I was excited. the tube went down, the machine made more noise and out came my delectable, which was brought over to the opening and unceremoniously dropped. wow! the trail mix I got for Erin was merely shoved from its display perch once I'd paid. as to the water I got, the machine helpfully displayed the message vending whilst it pecuniously stowed the money and dropped the bottle. just so you know that vending had occurred at the vending machine, which are well known to vend.

but hey, Flarf festival in NYC, Magic the Gathering Tournament in Bawston. Erin and I made the journey, to wit: commuter train to subway to shuttle out to Umass Boston, with Boston Harbour as backdrop. I love that there commuter train, I truly do. the bells start ringing at the crossings, then you hear the bell of the train, then the mythic creature hies into sight, then the whoosh as it decelerates, and we can board. and 2 minutes after embarking, there's Walden Pond out the window. which absolutely always excites me. at Porter Square we catch the subway. to reach the subway, one can take an absurdly long escalator down. I usually opt for the stairs but didn't this time. looking straight down it disconcertingly looks like we're moving horizontally. which causes a vertiginous wobble in my brain, I can't speak for anyone else. the tournament was at Umass's student union, this enormous new edifice, specifically in the cafeteria. it was a while before Erin's flight began, affording him plenty of time to survey the cards on sale. this stuff is fairly well out of my ken. I'm not a gamer by any stripe. Magic the Gathering throws me because for every rule, there seems to be a card that countermands that rule, and new ones always on the way. it's just too fluid for me. the crowd was older than I expected, college age more, with quite a few well older than that. and totally into it. while the temptation exists to think of a standard Magic type aficionada--you know: nerd--in sooth it's not that easy. yuh, there were quite a few there who look like they subsist on soda and don't get much sun, but there were many enough that don't fit the category at all. and there were a few females, so there's an outside chance that another generation of Magic enthusiasts may be born. sorry, just kidding. the common denominator was intense focus. those there to play can spend hours ogling cards, explaining to each other how particular cards work, and various strategic finepoints. once Erin got into his game I roamed. I had a notebook and just parked one place or another and wrote. eventually I stepped outside. I passed near a trash container, on which sat a seagull (herring gull). I was as close as 3 feet from it when it finally decided to move away a little. its confrere, bigger, was busy with a piece of trash. it would perspicaciously shake and chew the thing then drop it on the ground. finally a bit of food flew out, which the bird immediately consumed. the smaller bird watched in awe. the bigger bird went back to work on the rubbish until a much larger morsel, of a doughnut, became the prize. both of them continued at this work. they fluttered onto the trash container and snatched bits of trash out, to then be dealt with. it was like panning for gold. the larger one found something that rustled and I thought score!!!, but it proved to be a crushed cup with ice in it. I spent 15 minutes watching these 2 birds. I'm sorry they are eating doughnuts and french fries but it was fascinating to witness their endeavour. this reminds me of the botanist Edgar Anderson, a great deal of whose study into plants occurred in a vacant lot in St Louis. somewhere along the line a fellow asked if Erin wanted to trade cards. this is a feature of Magic card collecting. they went thru each other's available trades and picked out a few. they wrangled, discussed and came to an agreement. I'm sure there are instances of bad blood from these trades but my observation of this scene saw a sort of collabortive effort. I used to play a lot of pickup basketball games. no refs, of course, so if you felt that you were fouled you called it. it was surprisingly rare, no matter how tense the game, that anyone questioned such calls. I guess it's like that with these trades. Erin dashed off after completing the trade. after a while the fellow, who had remained at the table, said, hey where's he gone? he left his cards. this is an Erin trait, we're glad he brought his coat home. the guy handed me the box saying he'd lost his collection at one of these events. as Erin did last year. the guy could've horked them, as I was no more aware of their remaining there as was Erin. so that was nice. it was a fun trip, and we didn't even get lost.

I don't need to link to Jordan Davis's for chrissakes, whereat link to pictures of living flarfists on the hoof can be found. same goes for Nada Gordon. flarf is very expensive to produce: those Google searches do not grow on trees.