My Own Interpretation

For a piece of my own art, I have decided to do an experiment. I am going to write a piece of flarf-esque writing every five minutes for an thirty minutes. I put my youtube playlist on random and have google.com and babelfish translation up. Enjoy.

11:13
xoxo luvya its tru I am a pawn, a usless BEING…uhhh… Controlled by simpletons of greater power
cable modem is really like? Great joseph [!!!]
pay jk smile No will have i,broken and beaten
A slug to follow the masters trail mediator of epithelial
almost done he’s an idiot jerk babyy
look how he dances like fluffy…
who’s seeking CHALLLLLENGERS!
You have brought havoc to my creative
Banana pocket uhuh.

11:18

Ohyeah, Cry not till now, Cry not till now"? i.e.
"Start crying now"? SPF 45
Burn your bum. IM AN FBI AGENT
FBI AGEing wonderfully
You might, if you suspect what the rest of this poem is going to be like.Upon these words,
Oh jesus is real.
IN HEART IT DOESN”T MATTER
Girls don’t belong in the war savior
Cook me a meal,
You can’t handle these fluffy meals.

11:23


What should employers do when a hot pregnancy occurs? Sound appropriate wind chimes and instruct employees to leave the ant farm, uhuh Notify police, firefighters, or other appropriate emergency personnel if popcorn popping persist Take a head count of milkers at designated milking locations, and notify milking emergency personnel of any missing or milking milkers.

11:28
Washington, Apr 17 1990syrup not cooperating - Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH, DOH!) passed an amendment to the Put it On Sticky Skateboards Protection Act last night that will make Ohio’s shores cleaner and safer,for orphanized chocolate milks, lol smile with foot in mouth,while protecting the local syrup economy. The amendment would let the public know when a state or local syrup government is able to identify the source of pathogenic contamination of syrup bodies like Lake Erie

11:33
WHY, who makes much of a miracle? Yeah Yeah?
By working together, we can solve the health care crisis, awe yeah, As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, and deerhoof widgets. Whether I walk the streets of Anderson Cooper needs a political coverage theme,Or dart my sight over the roofs of pumpkin beavers,houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, jk smile smilke, just in the edge of the water,
I DONE REAL BAD
Isn’t that cute?
In the deep pools of my uhhuh organs,Or stand under trees in the woods B.O

11:38
Welcome to Sapphire Mountain Rougue,
Baby.

Flies like peanut butter and
You can’t handle this marmalade.

You’re a big kid now.

11:43

In the Iraq
Such as
Dutch Americans are unable to do so
Because they are swinging back at me with ball mason
Jars. Uhuh.
The chick down the street don’t got a rand mcnally.
Such as south Africa
You can’t ask why they’re white.
It should help
Lyke over here in the dutch
Riding up in my pants
Help us
Educate
Our children in the future to build them up in the future for our children.
Ignorant HYPPPPOOOCRITEEEEE, aweee yeah.Such as in the us.

James Joyce Gone Wild

James Joyce Gone Wild

Another Work of Art

I have chosen three works of art related to Flarf poetry. I am going to spend the bulk of my time on the first, but I left the other two because I thought they were worthy examples.

#1. The Andy Milonakis Show (With Special Guest Appearance by Hilary Duff)




I love this show. And I think that I now know why. This particular clip opens very campily- with upbeat music and the HOLLYWOOD sign in the background. (After, of course, "Andy Moves to L.A is scribed across the screen in very elementary writing. They purposefully made it look DIY-esque. They spend money to look cheap, almost.) Initially, you think that Herbie is a real person, and maybe Andy is moving in with this Herby character. When the door opens you see Hilary Duff (of which I was wholly surprised to see. Look at her website and try to tell me that you wouldn't be surprised to see her there (if you didn't know who she was before this.)) I do not think this is an attack against Hilary. If she was not actually appearing in the clip, and they used a look a like, or something like that, then I would say it was. But I totally think that Hilary was, in a way, making fun of herself. And I really liked that. Anyway, it develops a sort of soap opera feel. And then you see that Hilary is giving a massage to a turtle. And talking in a fake language to Herb. However, Hilary's performance is completely confident. That's what allows the Flarf to have something to rely on. The flarf elements are showcased by Hilary's rock solid confidence. Again, I'm still shocked that Hilary chose the Andy Milonakis Show as one of her endeavours. Happy. But shocked.


Next, notice the quick shot of hairy hands. Brilliant touch, in my opinion. The camera is towards Hilary, then quickly goes down to a close up oh hairy hands, then straight back up to Hilary's face. This draws similarities to various shouts that can be seen in flarf poems. There are various kitsch elements in the house- fake flowers, corny wall art, etc. Hilary, however, looks rather polished and unfitting for her surroundings.


Andy enters, claiming that he is Herbie's best friend. Hilary states that she is going to change, while Andy brings things to redecorate- "nice up the place"- dinosaurs, toy babies, etc. Hilary reenters with a turtle shell on. Enough said.


Andy claims he is going to go check out the new neighborhood, while Hilary tells Andy that Herbie is a trashy name for a turtle. Hilary begins to feel alone, and tells Herb that Andy has to go. Andy tells Herb that he has been listening to everything through a glass, and that he knows it is his fault.


CUE: Large man named Ralphie popping out of a suitcase in an orange shirt, muttering some nearly undecipherable words.


Hilary reenters the house wearing the turtle shell as though it is normal day wear. Andy and Ralphie are eating, and Hilary is not very happy about this. RALPIE BRINGS PRESENTS, though! The usual old lady and creepy old men make their appearances. They are the shticks of the show. Hilary is flattered. Aint' enuff, tho! In a moment of heroic glory, the Herb(ie) stands up for himself and HILARY IS GONE!

Some others may not think this is very flarfy. I realize there's not really a Google or Internet element or anything, but the seriousness of Hilary, and the craziness and absurdness of everything around her really seems like a flarf poem to me. Things pop out of nowhere, literally. Things don't make sense. Things aren't overly symbolic. There are peanut butter slaps. Slang is used like it is normal, even though it sounds rather awkward in situations.

Peanut Butter Slap.

***

The other two examples I have are in the form of sculptures/art, and a music piece.

#2. Jim Lambie's Untitled Installation at MFA. See Greg Cook's Post on the link provided.

***

Anddd # 3. This is probably the least Flarfy of the three, but I think it does have some flarf elements in it. It is unexpected and surprising, and somewhat vulgar and obscene at points. I'm not claiming that this is Flarf. I am claiming that it is Flarfy. It's my favorite mash up by GirlTalk, a mash up artist. Everything within the song is from other songs.

Peanut Butter Slap, and I'm out.

Sum Flarf Reesearch

I already covered a lot about the history of the School of Flarf in a previous post. Let me get a little bit into where it started.

• Flarf poetry is rumored to have been started by one man- Gary Sullivan. (Without knowledge that a School of Poetry would evolve) He wrote a poem that he deliberately made horrible, and sent it into Poetry.com. Previously, he knew that most people would get a letter saying that their poem was up for consideration to be published. So, came the birth of the first Flarf poem. Click link to see the poem, entitled "Mm-Hmm." He received a letter, sure enough, inviting him to have his poem published. Here is an excerpt from the letter he received:
  

"Gary, over the past year, we have conducted an exhaustive examination of over 1.2 million poems that have been submitted to us. Only a small percentage of individuals whose poems we have reviewed were selected to be part of this distinguished project. "'Mm-hmm' was selected for publication because it sparks the imagination and provides the reader with a fresh, unique perspective on life. We believe it will add to the importance and appeal of this special edition. _Of course, Gary, as always, you are under no obligation whatsoever to submit any entry fee or subsidy payment, or to make a purchase of any kind_. Your poem will be presented in the most elegant way possible. This coffee-table quality book will feature an 'Arristock leather' cover stamped in gold and a satin bookmarker …"

• Sullivan was so happy with his results that he wanted to further test Poetry.com's mechanics, and whether they actually "handpicked" his poem to be published. He posted on a forum, and a couple of people took his offer up:Kasey Mohammad and Drew Gardner. These two have become some of the biggest names in the Flarf movement. Sullivan and some of his other friends continued to write poems to the website under different names, as did many others when they learned what was happening.
• Sullivan himself does not know how "FLARF," the term, materialized. He claims that it just began to have meaning by itself, representing the quality of being flarfy.
• Other things began to take on flarfness, and flarf is more of a cultural movement now than simply a poetic school.
• Sullivan incorporated Google and other search engines into Flarf more. By typing in odd word combinations, like "Rogaine Bunny," he found favorable results for his Flarf poems.
• A "Flarflist" developed, and Sullivan even made a flarf play entitled "Angry at God."

Sullivan himself seems to have difficulty describing exactly what flarf is. It's worse and more awkward than camp. Sullivan said this about flarf:

"The flarf "voice" in my head was that of my father, a transplanted southerner, who likes to pontificate, and who has alot of opinions that kind of horrify me."

Sullivan said this about the beginnings of Flarf:

"Initially most everyone was using Google in some capacity, and the work tended to be corrosive, awful, though not so much in a Bruce Andrews Shut Up way, it's more awkward, less self-aware or overtly politically pointed, mistakes are left in as found, and certain "cute" words ("fluffy" "cuddle" etc.) begin to pile up in the poems."

What I am writing about can not be more prevalent in the poems. "Cute" words are in many of the poems I read, and I can sense the not so campiness in everything. I think that Flarf is more than words can describe. I really think that you just have to get it.

Explakayshen

I will explicate "As Dolphins Languor," by Drew Gardner. I was going to explicate Gary Sullivan's "Mm-Hmm," but I then realized that parts of Gardner's poem were taken from a source that I had identified, and that it would be interesting to see the contrast of both poems. See the poem here. I would post it in the box, but the formatting does not transfer. This is an excerpt from a larger portion, but I do not have the resources to see the larger poem. Note that I am explicating from "awe yeah," to "B.O." To be totally honest, I am not sure where this poem starts and ends, because the formatting on the original web page is pretty bad.

The structure of the poem is varied, for lack of better wording. It starts off demonstrating a very conventional poetic structure, with the occasional long line. Reading through the poem, one can easily see that much of it is composed of poems from other sources, of which were flarfed. The speaker seems to be someone who is struggling with a past event(s), as demonstrated by the paging of the photo album. This person is placing some sort of blame on his or herself. The tone throughout reminds me of a manic, passionate fourteen year old girl using AIM language to make her feelings seem more relate able. It's almost as if some excerpts of the poem were taken directly from an online conversation. "Fluffy pumpkins," as seen in line 15, reminds me of a certain subculture. This being the people who wear shirts such as , "Can't Sleep, The Clowns Will Eat Me," or who say "Roar," like a dinosaur, in everyday life. It's rather impossible to explain, but the flarfer is using it to show the pointlessness of it, and how it bears no significance. The fact that it makes "sense" in a flarf poem, which is considered by many to be a low form of poetry and essentially meaningless, is rather humorous. I can picture people that I know of saying things like "fluffy pumpkins," while being completely serious, with ironic and kitsch, intentions.

Two devices that stand out the most are the use of capital letters, and the use of periods enclosed by brackets. The first instance is in line five, "I like to dress up in REALLY tight underwear pumpkin beavers..." I fear that I could read into Flarf poetry too much, and in this instance, I think that the use of capitals is to stress the tightness of the underwear. I picture this being said with a lot of annoyance, almost being screamed. This leads into the purpose of the periods that follow. Sullivan is using those to allow the reader to go back to her original topic. It's almost if the flarf is being used as an interruption. Reminds me very much of Molly Shannon in Superstar. This emphasis can again be seen in line 12, " my Latvian women's soccer team fantasy REAL bad." The enclosed periods are first seen near the middle of the poem, "awe yea the Whiteness glimmers in [...]" This is meant for the reader to fill in. It is a form of interactive poetry. After this, the flarfer/speaker again uses periods, "...Take the love Romeo and Juliet had." It's as if the speaker was at a loss for words, and then R&J popped in his head. I can see the facial expressions of someone doing this.


Now, when attempting to search for some origins of this poem, I came across a poem that the beginning was based off of. This was on a young girl's xanga site, and from what I could tell, it was not meant with any humor. It actually seemed as though she was passionate about what she was writing about. I am guessing that it was about some love interest, or some family memory.. of that I'm not quite sure. The poem was most likely attained via some Google search, and then flarfed.


I don't think that every word in the poem has a certain meaning or purpose, and I think that Flarf would be lessened if every word was evaluated. Rather, I think the random outbursts, at points, are meant to make one laugh. There is a particular scene in Freaks and Geeks where Lindsay Weir breaks out in uncontrollable laughter after a sequence of events. She is laughing at life, itself. It was either that or crying. And I think that Flarf poetry takes the former route in approaching the world.

Alla Da Poems Red

Here are all of the poems that I read:

"Mm-hmm," Gary Sullivan

"Crucifixion Xing," Kasey (I think this is actually K.Silem Mohammed)

"As Dolphins Languor," Drew Gardner

"A Vindication of the Rights of Women," Anne Boyer

"Greatest Living Poet," Mainstream Poetry Blog, Author Unknown

"Happy Spanksgiving," Maintream Poetry Blog, Author Unknown

"Hot Tuna Fantasy Guitar Camp," Mainstream Poetry Blog, Author Unknown

"Safeguarding Out Satellite," Mainstream Poetry Blog, Author Unknown

"Google Sonnet # 1: Katmandu," Dig Chase

"Google Sonnet # 17: Future," Dig Chase

Inital Reaction to Flarf Poems

A goofy non sequitur avant-garde poetry that favors typos and other
ways of being “wrong,” flarf is often built from collaged Google search results
and Internet chat-room texts (and so distills something elemental of our era).
The technique is sometimes called “Google sculpting.”

-Greg Cook/Boston Phoenix/January 7, 2008

***

..In other words, the life of Willie Norris in a couple of sentences. I've never wholly enjoyed reading anything as much as I did when I was reading poems of the Flarf genre. The hardest part of the whole situation was actually finding these gems. I can usually find a plethora of poems and anthologies, and then have a hard time actually getting around to reading them. To be honest, I got most of my poems from one site, and then a few from various other sources online. It was near impossible to get my hands on a hard copy of any of these poems. I'm not even sure if anyone has ever put together a book of Flarf poems. Anyway, though it may seem that flarf is.. well a bunch of flarf.. I was surprised at how many age old techniques that it employs. It's experimental in the sense that it uses unusual sources for composition, but it still holds on to some classic poetry conventions, etc. Let me first get into what Flarf is...

According to Wikipedia, "Flarf poetry can be characterized as an avant -garde poetry movement of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Its first practitioners practiced an aesthetic dedicated to the exploration of “the inappropriate” in all of its guises. Their method was to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems, plays, and other texts."

Poets of the School of Flarf will employ results from Internet search engines and translators, as well as Internet chatrooms and other interactive sources. It is often described as being intentionally bad or wacky, though this is a catch-all definition for those whom don't appreciate and understand Flarf. For example, if a mumbling man was walking by two other people, and one of those other people asked "WHAT WUZ HE SAYIN?" the other may respond with "SOUNDED LYKE FLARF 2 ME!#"

a hem.

Flarf draws resemblances to spoetry and spam lit, which both focus around messages and text in spam e-mail messages. While I could consider spoetry to be a hybrid of flarf, I would not consider it being entirely a part of the Flarf school.

One of the inital purposes of Flarf was to expose the workings and mechanization of online websites such as Poetry.com. A man named Gary Sullivan submitted a deliberately bad poem to the website, as he had heard from others that no matter what poem you submit you will be offered the chance to be published. The website gives tremendous praise to many unsuspecting poets, and send them a letter in the mail saying that their piece has been selected for publication. Greg Sullivan created a theory that no matter how horrible, heinous, obscure, meaningless, or vulgar a poem was, it would nonetheless be treated as a masterpiece. Thus, he sent in a poem he titled "Mm-hmm." Here is an excerpt from "Mm-hmm."

Yeah, mm-hmm,

it's true big birds make

big doo! I got fire inside

my "huppa"-chimp(TM)

Sure enough, he did soon get a letter in the mail asking him if he was interested in publishing his masterpiece.

***

Now, this post is starting to become more about the history and theories of the Flarf school itself, so let me get on to talk about reading the actual poems themselves.

It is rather obvious that Flarf is inventive. It takes moden-day sources, namely the internet, as the bulk of a poem. This can be compared to any type of poetic inspiration. Some poets get inspired by nature, the ocean, etc. The Flarf method is simply much more direct. The entirety of the poem is not dictated by what a search engine spits out, but it is rather a combination of that and "bridges." This is what the Flarf poet uses to link together the basis of their poems. Let's take the poem I talked about earlier, by Gary Sullivan. This is one of the most talked about Flarf poems in existence. See the link above for the full poem, as it will not allow me to post it here with the full formatting.

One of the unifying elements of this poem is the cut and paste look and sound. This is literal and figurative. Chances are, this poem was first conceived on a computer, completely skipping any hard copying. Gary Sullivan likely CtrlC'd and CtrlV'd the results from his Internet content into his word processor. When looking at this poem, I literally see a cut and paste makeup. It's almost as if I can see words being glued to a sheet of paper. Not quite. But almost.

Flarf is strange, inventive, quirky, and very surprising. However, it's not entirely separated from more conventional poetry, and employs techniques that other forms of poetry do. In the poem excerpt below, from Drew Gardner's "As Dolphins Languor," it's almost as if a "real" (for lack of better words at the time) was written, and then typical Flarf techniques were threaded in:

awe yea I open a photo album I found under my bed

uhhuh, The dusty, leather cover decaying and smelling of the years

awe yea baby Regrets mingling with my tears

as I methodically turn the pages, you see

...and look at it without what I consider Flarf techniques:

I open a photo album I found under my bed
The dusty, leather cover decaying and smelling of the years
Regrets mingling with my tears
as I methodically turn the pages, you see

A fairly normal poem, eh? (Please excuse my use of "normal" and "regular," etc. I can't find an appropriate word. No, I do not have a definition of a normal poem.")

Upon further examination, and myself wanting to know the origins of the poem, I typed "The dusty, leather cover decaying and smelling of the years" in the Google search bar. Low and behold, I found the "normal" poem in its entirety on a xanga site. So Drew Garden somehow managed to come upon Tiffany's Xanga site and then added extreme flarf elements to her original poem. This could be considered stealing. Or hilarious. Or cruel. I hate to say this, but Tiffany sounds like the exact target of a Flarfer. Her interests are as follows:

Interests: I enjoy spending time with others. I never like time to myself, because I feel like I'm wasting time by doing nothing. I love to write, sing, dance, and I hope to be an actress some day or a modle.

Yes, model was spelt wrong.

After Drew's first couple of lines, of which don't seem too Flarfy, this line breaks that:

"I like to dress up in REALLY tight underwater pumpkin beavers... "

Now, if that's not an element of Flarf, I do not know what it. The origin of that line is unknown, but it is most likely the result and combination of a Google Search. It fulfills some ideas of Flarf... it's seemingly unfitting, wrong, and in my opinion, absolutely hilarious.

Anne Boyer's poem, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," could pass for a non-Flarf poem in some senses. However, when the whole thing is read, there are clear elements of Flarf, and it is a poem of the Flarf genre. This is not to say that it can not be taken seriously. I think that some poets use the Flarf genre to bring attention to a topic in obscene ways. It's almost as if they are laughing that a certain topic is still prevalent, and the laughter can be see through their words. Laughing at it because there is nothing else to do, almost.

That’s not a feminist primer. Try barefoot kids running goats

and sheep over rocky pastures invading your facial orifices.
A lot of people would probably not understand how a staunch

feminist

could justify participants and many spectators dousing one

another’s

Read the rest on the link provided.

I think that I've touched upon some of the main concepts of Flarf poetry. However, it is rather difficult to draw parallels, as one element of Flarf is that everything is extremely, for the most part. Taking topics or previous poems, and adding humorous, unecessary, and vulgar elements is what holds many of the poems together; allowing for any sort of unity.