My "poem" at ForGodot.com
So some "researchers" going by the names Vladimir Zykov, Stephen McLaughlin and Gregory Laynor have published a 3,758 page "anthology" of "poems" at ForGodot.com by just about every poet mentioned on the internet. From Jorie Graham and Fanz Kafka to Rachel Mallino and little old me. It's a free, downloadable PDF. My "poem" is called A boy of territories and is on page 3,157. My blog won't let me do the random indentation, but here are the words:
On Friday at the latest, I'll post a pdf that will take you a few minutes to download. It will contain original contributions from each of the poets previously listed, as well as another two or three thousand. I'm waiting on a few stragglers. So keep yr aggregators tuned this way etc. etc., and rest up good. If you're up to it, I'd suggest gulping the magazine whole, for 83 straight hours of transcendent poetic revelry reflecting the whole panoply of human achievement, emotion, wistfulness, and athletic achievement.
A boy of territories
Like exceptional masses
Get my pile
I wander at night
with the quick
leagues
This implement may come and proscribe,
but it is smoothly yellow
The wrestlers of a faded brain
run themselves, kept, struggled-a glee
to their boys
like slow territories
A ken is secretarial
between this sight
and that sight
I can feel the spate of the
theme
Then the throat
Belong
Of course, I didn't write this. It seems to be the ultimate experiment in flarf. Some have called it culture jamming. Maybe it's a statement about the proliferation of online poetry. The "researchers" seem to have aggregated the most used words in poetry, or stolen random lines, and regurgitated/reassembled them into new poems and assigned random names to them. Some poets are not happy about it; some find it amusing. I actually like the title of mine, and since I...ahem...wrote it, I might just use it. I also like the line, "I wander at night with the quick leagues." When I first heard about this via Evan Peterson's blog (he's in the "anthology," too), there was concern the "researchers" were going to randomly steal poems from the net without permission. After reading some of the horrible assembled poems, some poets might have preferred theft.
After apparently being bombarded, one of the "editors" released this statement:
In England, they call this "taking the piss."
Comments
Allow me to make it clear that I wholeheartedly support this piss take. I'm not crazy about the work attributed to me, but I defend these artists' right to satirize me.
I'm not so much angry as I am saddened. And not saddened because my name is attributed to a p.o.s. poem that I didn't write, but saddened by the mockery of our art.
To those who consider this an "I told you so" moment that poets are ego driven, to that I say, "how can it be an I told you so moment when no one has argued against it?"
Everyone in the world is ego driven, in one form or another, some more-so than others. Hell, I think my dog is ego driven at times. That whole idea is stupendously stupid and no "a ha" moment has occurred.
Funny? almost.
Enlightening? if only they were smarter than they actually are.
I think it's a piss poor attempt at psychology 101.
Oh, and I'm in it, but haven't located my poem yet.
Hurrah! Fluxus lives.
r
I'm on page 2647.
Since everybody knows this is a random generation of words and our names are the only things of ours being used, what can we complain about?? We have 15 seconds more of unwarrented fame:-)
Colling, where IS that PDF link?
Pris
Just called here after reading Pris' post about the same on her blog.
Strange goings on in my humble opinion!