Otohime

You didn’t want me
to sidle up to the high
chthonic voltage, number
than frost, number than
the coiled attachments:
a kind of siphon
for this hamhanded
burgeoning. If I imitate
your enthusiastic rejecting
anxious beloved, can I
enter your hall of
repressed dismay? I can’t
get her haircut: I don’t
have that kind of hair.
I’m better than she is,
who does not think of you,
just as you do not think
of me. The world spins
on these bitternesses: my XXXX
for you offends me yet.

Cy wrote me a nice comment about the poem two posts down from here, “SPLENDOR”:

I confess I’m curious as to whether it’s a Flarf generated poem or not (not that it matters!).

Let’s discuss this, shall we? Or rather, deconstruct it. Firstly, Flarf is not (in the robotic sense of the term) “generated.” Flarf poems are written. Their materials are, in Kasey’s term, sought. I almost prefer the word rescued. Some poems may be “generated,” like that wonderful “Random Poem Generator” that was hanging around the internet for a while, but Flarf poems are very much willed and constructed.

In a larger sense of the term, I suppose you could say this poem was generated if that is how you think of the mechanism of creation: I do often think of poems as almost biological extrusions, like skin tags or fibroids or, as I posted recently on facebook, reflux.

At any rate, if this poem or any has a generator it is me and not “Flarf.” I’m curious, though, as to whether any of you read it as a “Flarf poem” and if so, why?

Let’s look at the second part of the statement: the good-natured “not that it matters!” Well, hmm, let’s think about that for a minute. Are you sure it doesn’t matter? I am tempted of course to say, right, it doesn’t matter a bit, but that’s the lazy way out. I think we do assign value differently to poems we think of as being constructed from rescued materials than we do to poems that we imagine might have been “inspired.” The assignment of value depends very much on who is doing the assignment and what their “valor sets” are for poetry. I like to keep my valor set somewhat uncodified, although I will swear up and down that I know what poetry is and what it is not, and that when I feel it to be good, I can argue for why I believe so and how it fits into my model of poetry.

My guess is that you, Cy, would like to test your cognitive reaction to the poem against your valor set. That’s perfectly understandable. We all do that.

I’m also wondering whether anyone rather dislikes the poem, maybe finds it too closed or too “poetic,” or too confrontational, or lacking in innovation, perhaps. Or maybe you find something a little naggy about it, or a little neurotic, or just dully unconceptual.

I’m super-tired. I would like to be at the Poetry Project tonight listening to Chris Nealon and Catherine Wagner, I would like that very much, but I’m just too tired. I really thought I was going to lose it on the train to work this morning: the door closing bell made me want to let loose a big guttural scream.

Which reminds me, how come women get maternity leaves for THREE MONTHS per baby when women who choose to be artists instead of having babies don’t ever get TIME OFF to make their ART or write their POEMS? I suppose this unfairness could count for men, too. I want THREE MONTHS OFF RIGHT NOW. Do all those BABIES really “contribute more to society” than all this potential unmade art and poetry would? Or do they just DRAIN it with all their NEEDS? I’m almost ready to fake a pregnancy.

Noah and Paul Zukofsky’s Ark

Maybe in the sandstorm of metaphor
you really don’t have a body –
but there’s something palpable
that makes me want to do battle
with your ectoplasmic splendor.
No alembic. Your body folds under you
as a collapsed puppet: my fervent
conquest of your gangliness now just
icky taxidermy. There are wings
under my armpits and also
secret beings. They straddle your
imagination in my imagination.
That is how we do not come
to know one another.

Thanks Amy and Ana!

Shall I be Louis Quatorze for Hallowe’en?

It doesn’t seem like such a stretch, although I’ve been going through this matchy conservative thing lately.

I do like suede, suede boots, oh. Hate shininess, patent leather. Flannel bubble skirt in greens, Zara, bought secondhand in some other city. Where? I forget.

The fall which is now pretending to be winter making me oddly macho. I know I’m dressed like a secretary here more or less, but those are Harley-Davidson boots, and my stance is pure Sun King. N’est-ce pas?

I dressed like a grownup against the briskness today. I don’t feel like a grownup particularly, but like sailing chaos crashing about tiredly. Look how pale I am! I need to eat a train. Or a whole railroad.

I erased my post asking for help with what to do with opinions, because who cares, although I was reminded of it, tonally, by the most recent post by Lindsey Boldt. Really, the saddest posts are the cries for attention that everyone ignores. I’m reassured by the neediness of others (and this is the religious impulse), even if I’m repelled by it, too (and this is the impulse to nihilism).

Well, I can dwell, if uncomfortably, in ambiguities. Can you?

I am going to crash through this post. With notes and quotations from readings I’ve been to recently:

Laura Moriarty:

able to gyrate in marmalade only

Paul Foster Johnson

[lots of tripling, and triple negatives!]

not not not

Anna Moschavakis:

The Greek word cynic translates as doglike.

There were always low level scientologists hanging around the dumpsters in dirty uniforms.

Kim Rosenfield:

(in her panel of scientists’ voice)

All these documents are registered on microcassettes.

No more, no less, then the study of intonation

Bhanu Kapil:

There were some sugar crystals on the carpet, I knew I should hoover them up before they got ground in.

I compared myself to a Safeway rotisserie chicken. I said I didn’t want to be one.

Monica de la Torre

The color is a readymade – a part of the industrial production of feeling.

Hats gags games and magic are subject to random searches

Christine Wertheim:

My eyes stutter – my patter is the swoon of the sound

(dogs barking in sympathy)

Vanessa Place:

election box

dripping pan

devil’s donut

popo

lap flounder

fish mitten

Michael Nicoloff:

I’ll start calling you the sub-prime mover

I hate other poets

This haircut reflects my experience

Woke up on the wrong side of my woman suit

and his collabs with Alli Warren

slurping ramen, experiencing “glow”

automatically I love pleather

getting all bulbous on my own ass

Mel Nichols

wet panties in sunlight/ save me from the scary clownheads

the lawn’s intense

oh… human poets
oh… extra second in the world

I love the way a leprechaun scab feels on my skin.

I mean, Ben Franklin was the Joyce Carol Oates of his time.

Catriona Strang

war is also mind

I get my drift

I’m so catty in green

blink light slobbers horns

Margaret Christakos

marvel comically

a portal that would open on a room full of squirming words

to be entertained is such release

I couldn’t bear to listen to Nicole Brossard. Who is she speaking to? [I wrote.]A bunch of meta-garble. My eyes glaaaaaze over… sounds better in French…. I started looking around: Anne Waldman in a coral/ orange scarf and tunic of maybe Tibetan ornament. Jen’s brilliant silver hybrid shoes… Vanessa’s pierced brow white shirt black jeans… Mark Weiss in Japonoiseries… Emily Beall in “Midwestern” plaid… Bernstein also in plaid pastel, sitting quite sideways slumped… Pierre Joris has a “dandy” face … his mouth… brown print shirt with torches or ice cream cones… Jen plays with her hair… checking ends?

“it is frightening, this carpet of words”

and this I don’t know if I wrote this or Brossard did. Maybe I was going all homophonic on her: “the snoot wind through the roses/ don’t be afraid to touch your mélange gully/ lil sketches/ your mother in her bed tub/ the klezmer barkeep“ [uh, this all sounds like me]

Rachel Z,’s pale pink shirt with silkscreened SQUIRREL– where did she get the SQUIRREL?

“of course we do write with letters” no! [feigned surprise!]

Huh: an ABECEDARIAN book! How INNOVATIVE!

I was thinking she’s actually incompetent.

remember my continuum from my erased poets, loyal readers?

MAKE IT STOP
UGH
HUH
WOW
OUT OF THIS WORLD

I’ll just let you infer ratings, or tack on your own.

Kisses!

Here’s yours truly in Neo-Benshi performance from the Movie Nite Festival, a benefit for Dixon Place In New York City, held on May 1st and 2nd, 2009. Based on footage from the film “Navrang” by the great V. Shantaram. Event organized by the great Brandon Downing.

so tired…

the hormones hate me

This Friday, October 9, 7:00 pm — The Way of the Word
Poetry Extravaganza curated by Bob Holman, Suzanne Fiol, and Kenneth Goldsmith
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
At the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tel: 718-330-0313

featuring the amazing poets:

Bob Holman
Ken Goldsmith
Jonas Mekas
Anne Waldman
Judith Malina
Abiodoun Oyewole (of the Last Poets)
Hettie Jones
Jeff Wright
Esther K. Smith
Georgia Luna Faust
Michael Carter
Kathy Engel
Kimiko Hahn
Beau Sia
Holly Anderson
Max Blagg
Frank Lima
Betsey Andrews
Mike Topp
Steve Dalachinsky
Yuko Otumo

and the FLARF POETS:

Gary Sullivan
Sharon Mesmer
Drew Gardner
Katie Degentesh
Jordan Davis
Brandon Downing
Nada Gordon

Rest in peace and art, beautiful Suzanne.