by Neal Whitman

Created on: August 28, 2009

Circling the Drain

Poetry could matter in the 21st century, but too many poets today hold the Common Reader (I hold myself to be one) in well, le't's put it this way. Look up the English department in a college catalogue and you will see a listed course abbreviated as Contemp. Poetry." But, if the Registrar followed the Truth in Advertising dictum, it should be listed as "Contempt Poetry." In contempt of us? Yes, they do. Too much of what The Pobiz puts out there deserves to be flushed down the well, let's block that metaphor. But, speaking of flush, have you heard of farf?

Clive James wrote in July-August 2009 Poetry that, "Almost everyone writes poetry, but scarcely anyone one can write a poem." I imagine him circling the 30 pages that preceded his commentary. This was a special section, "Flarf and Conceptual Writing" edited by Kenneth Goldsmith who introduces these new forms of poetry by admitting that "no one has written a word of it. It has been grabbed, cut, processed, machined, honed, flattened, repurposed, regurgitated, and reframed from the great mass of free-floating language out there just begging to be turned into poetry."

One "flarf" poem was entitled, "Why do I hate flarf so much?" by Drew Gardner. Confession: I had to consult the footnotes because I was not sure if it was a flarf or an editorial denouncing it. It is a flarf. One "conceptual" poem was one of Goldsmith's own: "Metropolitan Forecast," a transcription from the New York Times, September 11, 2001. This poem, the weather report, appears in his book, The Day, in which he transcribed every word of the paper that day. He did this once before on September 1, 2000, in Day. As I circled the 45 of pages of "regular" poems that precede the 30 pages of "flarf," my eye was caught by another "f" word: "Blowing the Fluff Away" by Robyn Sarah.

Here I found more weight than flarf in her ode to "a sprig of an unknown bloom" that, over time, "had turned to fluff some months ago." Her poem is full of wonder. Her words lifted off the page like, well like fluff. Her words had the power to lift me too. I thought I had my full of flarf and fluff until my copy of July-August American Poetry Review arrived. There on the cover, a photograph of Gary Snyder standing on a mountain top. Windblown. Grey beard. Ruggedly handsome. From my angle, looks like an advert for Ralph Lauren designer sunglasses. Turn the page and there they are: frags by Gary Snyder nine of 'em. Here is one:

"White Rumps"

Northern Flicker

Pronghorns

Dwarf stars

receding

Am so jealous. Wish my name were Gary Snyder so APR would publish my pseudo-haiku frags. Here is one:

"

Found at Baxter State Park"

Bear Badger

Berry Bird

Constellations

with no road

July 5 2009, the New York Times, Travel Section, "The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown" by Mary Duenwald: Here is an invitation to walk the paths where Mary Oliver found the words to write, "Five A.M. in the Pinewoods." No, not "found" in the conceptual poetry sense of Ms. Oliver copying down the words on the National Park Service signs posted along the trail (one of the Goldsmith's conceptual poetry selections was a shopping mall directory "found" by Robert Fitterman, whose publisher is Ugly Duckling Presse really)!. No, in the last century, Mary Oliver found poems in her heart and soul, as in I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines, walking like two mute and beautiful woman toward the deeper woods Do I hear, "click, click, click"? No, please, no. That is not Kenneth Goldsmith word processing the July 5, 2009, New York Times, to produce his third 900-page transcription?

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