Flarf poetry

{{short description|Avant-garde poetry movement of the early 21st century}} '''Flarf poetry''' was an ''avant-garde'' poetry movement of the early 21st century. The term '''''flarf''''' was coined by the poet Gary Sullivan, who also wrote and published the earliest Flarf poems.<ref name="Publishers Weekly">{{cite journal|journal=Publishers Weekly|date=November 2001|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9710371-1-3|title=How to Proceed in the Arts by Gary Sullivan }}</ref> Its first practitioners, working in loose collaboration on an email mailing list, used an approach that rejected conventional standards of quality and explored subject matter and tonality not typically considered appropriate for poetry. One of their central methods, invented by Drew Gardner, was to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into humorous or disturbing poems, plays and other texts.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pw.org/content/can_flarf_ever_be_taken_seriously?cmnt_all=1/|title=Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?|author=Shell Fischer|date=1 July 2009|access-date=5 August 2015}}</ref>

Pioneers of the movement include Jordan Davis, Katie Degentesh, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Mitch Highfill, Rodney Koeneke, Michael Magee, Sharon Mesmer, Mel Nichols, Katie F-S, K. Silem Mohammad, Rod Smith, Gary Sullivan and others.

==Overview==

Joyelle McSweeney wrote in the ''Constant Critic'':<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.constantcritic.com/joyelle_mcsweeney/petroleum_hat/|title=Constant Critic – Joyelle McSweeney – Petroleum Hat|access-date=5 August 2015}}</ref> {{Quotation|Jangly, cut-up textures, speediness, and bizarre trajectories … I love a movement that’s willing to describe its texts as "a kind of corrosive, cute, or cloying awfulness". This is utterly tonic in a poetry field crowded by would-be sincerists unwilling to own up to their poems’ self-aggrandizing, sentimental, bloviating, or sexist tendencies.}}

Joshua Clover wrote in ''The Claudius App'':<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-clover.html|title=Joshua Clover – Generals and Globetrotters – The Claudius App|access-date=5 August 2017|archive-date=16 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816234714/http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-clover.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> {{Quotation|If both (conceptual poetry and flarf) are compelled by what we might term impoetic language, flarf seems interested in discovering the poetic within that field, finding the excess and alterity that once defined poetic language but now must be found elsewhere, within the circuits of ersatz fame and junkspeech, within the anonymized and reshuffled errancies of various machinic protocols (whether it is the Google search algorithm, or a purported human adapting herself to the imperatives of a virtual chatroom.}}

In 2007, Barrett Watten, a poet and cultural critic, long associated with the so-called Language poets observed that:<ref>[http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/index.html How ''The Grand Piano'' Is Being Written] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070513152219/http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/index.html |date=2007-05-13 }}.</ref> {{Quotation|It is precisely, however, to the degree that Flarf does something new performatively and with its use of the detritus of popular cultural and the internet, treading the high/low distinction until it breaks under the weight, that it reinvents the avant-garde. In a larger aesthetic economy, it seems, "the truth will out". Flarf's recent productivity shows how the injunction against the sentence, paragraph, narrative, and even discourse from some sectors of the Language school intersects with actual conditions of language use. Any such thing as stylistic norms in the avant-garde must inevitably intersect with "life". }}

Discussion about Flarf has been broadcast by the BBC and NPR and published in magazines such as The Atlantic, Bookforum, ''The Constant Critic'', ''Jacket'', The Nation, ''Rain Taxi'', ''The Wall Street Journal'' and The Village Voice. Further discussion has taken place on dozens of blogs and listservs across the United States, and in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Mexico, and elsewhere.

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links==

===Poems on-line=== *[http://mainstreampoetry.blogspot.com FLARF: MAINSTREAM Poetry for a MAINSTREAM World] a weblog, active since January 2003, devoted to the poetics of flarf *[http://jacketmagazine.com/30/ '''Flarf Feature''' at ''Jacket Magazine''] includes work from some of this movement's more recognizable practitioners including: Jordan Davis, Katie Degentesh, Benjamin Friedlander, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Rodney Koeneke, Michael Magee, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, Rod Smith, & Gary Sullivan *[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/237176 Poetry Magazine feature] Flarf is Dionysus. Conceptual Writing is Apollo. An introduction to the 21st Century's most controversial poetry movements. *An Italian example of "Googlism": https://ita.calameo.com/read/000115790b3167bea3911

===Audio and textual practice: essays and discussion=== *[http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/syllabi/readings/flarf.html ''The Flarf Files''] at the Electronic Poetry Center *[http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/02/books/flarf-from-glory-days-to-glory-hole ''Flarf: From Glory Days to Glory Hole''] an article by Gary Sullivan at ''The Brooklyn Rail'' *[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704912004575252223568314054 ''Google-Inspired Verse Gains Respect''] an article by Gautam Naik in the ''Wall Street Journal'' *[http://jacketmagazine.com/36/r-sullivan-rb-apps.shtml ''The Tragic and the Wacky''] a review of Gary Sullivan's ''PPL in a Depot'' in ''Jacket Magazine'' *[http://jacketmagazine.com/29/hoy-flarf.html ''The Virtual Dependency of the Post-Avant and the Problematics of Flarf''] an article by Dan Hoy at ''Jacket Magazine'' *[http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0434,essay,56171,1.html ''O, You Cosh-Boned Posers!''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060909042514/http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0434,essay,56171,1.html |date=2006-09-09 }} this essay from the ''Village Voice'' is subtitled: "Awful poems sought and found: From spam to Google, flarf redefines random" *[http://jacketmagazine.com/31/snyder-flarf.html "The New Pandemonium" essay on flarf by Rick Snyder] *[http://jacketmagazine.com/31/gottlieb-flarf.html "Googling Flarf" by Michael Gottlieb] *[https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-know-that-some-people-are-going-to.html Ron Silliman on Michael Magee's ''My Angie Dickinson''] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090907215106/http://studio360.org/episodes/2009/01/23 ''Studio 360: Schreiber, Flarf, Redman''] discussions, interviews, and readings of flarf poetry *[http://www.pw.org/content/can_flarf_ever_be_taken_seriously?cmnt_all=1 "Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously?"] article in Poets and Writers *[http://www.constantcritic.com/joyelle_mcsweeney/petroleum_hat/ Petroleum Hat] The Constant Critic's Joyelle McSweeney reviews Drew Gardner's "Petroleum Hat" *[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/flarf-poetry-meme-surfs-with-kanye-west-and-the-lolcats/65543/ Flarf: Poetry Meme-Surfs With Kanye West and the LOLCats] Article on Flarf in The Atlantic *[http://www.bookforum.com/booklist/4091 Flarf Poetry] Flarf primer on Bookforum featuring reviews of "The Anger Scale" by Katie Degentesh, "Petroleum Hat" by Drew Gardner, "Folly" by Nada Gordon, "Musee Mechanique" by Rodney Koeneke, "My Angie Dickinson" by Michael Magee, "Annoying Diabetic Bitch" by Sharon Mesmer. "Deer Head Nation" by K. Silem Mohammad, & "PPL in a Depot" by Gary Sullivan *[http://banangolit.tumblr.com/post/6511795816/on-flarf "On Flarf" by Rachel Hyman] *[https://writingworkshop.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2011/12/01/you-call-that-a-poem-understanding-the-flarf-movement/"You Call That a Poem?! Understanding the Flarf Movement] by Jack Chelgren *[http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-clover.html "Generals and Globetrotters" by Joshua Clover] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120323173416/http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-clover.html |date=2012-03-23 }}

===Music and performance=== *[http://www.aerialedge.com/DrewGardnerFlarfOrchestraCD.html Flarf Orchestra CD] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130121214443/http://www.aerialedge.com/DrewGardnerFlarfOrchestraCD.html |date=2013-01-21 }} Music and poetry conducted by Drew Gardner. *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHVAMPWocg Flarf Orchestra live video] The Flarf Orchestra performing live at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. Features Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon and Sharon Mesmer.

;Flarf vs. Conceptualism controversy *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBTPXbIVbTk Why Conceptualism is Better than Flarf: Vanessa Place] Poet and lawyer Vanessa Place's talk recorded on March 11, 2010 at AWP 2010: Denver, "Flarf & Conceptual Poetry Panel" ** [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/ill-steal-your-poets-like-i-stole-your-bike/ Why Flarf is better than Conceptualism by Drew Gardner] K. Silem Mohammad has called this piece "Drew Gardner's answer to Vanessa Place" *[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/conceptual-or-literal/ conceptual or literal?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110218172940/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/conceptual-or-literal/ |date=2011-02-18 }} American poet-critic Alan Gilbert weighs in on the controversy {{Schools of poetry}} {{Avant-garde}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flarf Poetry}} Schools of poetry Category:Poetry movements Category:American poetry Category:Random text generation Category:21st-century poetry Category:American literary movements Category:21st-century American literature