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Is Flarf Real?
The word has come up in poetry discussions for the last few years, but nobody seems to have a very
good idea of what Flarf means. Flarf sounds like a cross between fluff and barf, which doesn’t
exactly give the term the gravitas of words such as sonnet or sestina. When you seek out a
definition from standard sources, they come up with contradictory definitions.
In a recent issue of Poetry, the editors say, “Flarf is quasi-procedural and improvisatory.”
That’s not very helpful. Procedural is generally considered the opposite of improvisatory,
but they go on. “This new poetry [is]...reframed from the great mass of free-floating
language out there.” Isn’t that pretty much what poets have been doing for centuries,
sculpting poetic language from the great mass of free-floating language? But there’s more.
“Many of the poems are sculpted from the results of Internet searches, often using words
and phrases that the poet has gleaned from poems posted by other poets to the Flarflist
e-mail listserv.” This definition doesn’t tie things down very tightly. How can we readers
tell a word that occurs in the poet’s mind from one that pops up on a Internet search?
Why should we care about its source? Isn’t poetry about the impact words make, not
their ancestry? For clarification, I guess, the editors add, Flarf is more Dionysian
than Apollonian. OK. There it is then.
If you are still a bit confused, you might go to the web sources to get a definition.
Flarf by all accounts appears to have been fathered by the Internet. Wikipedia defines Flarf
as “an avant garde poetry movement” [That’s safe enough.] dedicated to the aesthetic “exploration
of the inappropriate in all of its guises.” This definition doesn’t exactly tell you where
to put the rhymed lines and how many stanzas maketh a Flarf. But it goes on. Wikipedia says
that Flarf is a “hodge-podge assortment” of words taken from miscellaneous Internet searches
offered up with all their grammatical inaccuracies, and is therefore not to be taken seriously.
I think I can go along with that idea at least.
So what is this thing anyway? According to both sources, Flarf was a term coined by a poet
named Gary Sullivan who says that Flarf is not to be taken seriously,
because it was originally intended as “an in-joke among an elite clique,
a marketing strategy, and as offering a new way of reading creative writing.”
All right now that’s enough. If it’s an in-joke how can it be of interest to
the general public? It’s either one or the other. And how does an in-joke turn
into a marketing strategy? One looks inward; the other outward. It doesn’t make
any sense. Other critics have called it Spam poetry after the junk mail that comes
with an e-mail address. That might be true, but how does Spam become poetry exactly?
There’s something missing in all these definitions.
Reading the poems that have been labeled as Flarf does not clarify the problem.
Poems by Gary Sullivan appear on the page as the words to a cartoon narrative
but without a connective story line. Poems in Poetry by self-styled Flarf
poet Jordon Davis range from what I call short joke poems, complete with
a punch line, to poems that reframe cultural icons like Bugs Bunny as a thug.
Mel Nichol’s “I Google Myself” is a more traditional modernist poem about
the self-absorption that occurs in the cyber-arena when people look at
their own reflection too often. Sharon Mesmer’s Flarf poem “The Swiss
Just Do Whatever” shows no sign of flarfliness that I can discern, no
assortment of miscellaneous Internet words, not even a reframed icon.
Instead it focuses our attention on shockingly lewd statements offered
pretty much for their own sake. If there’s a common thread, here,
I’m not finding it. I’m back where I started. What is Flarf poetry anyway?
Some kind of joke?
If it’s a joke, it’s one that has traveled at Internet speed.
The poetry world has been going Flarf crazy. Self-styled Flarf
poets were invited to read at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City sponsored a
Flarf poetry reading. Edge Books is planning to release the first
Flarf anthology very soon. And the Poetry Club in Manhattan has
sponsored its third three-day Flarf festival complete with flarfy
music to accompany the general mayhem. So, it must mean something
to somebody. Doesn’t it? Surely Flarf must mean something to somebody,
even if Flarf’s proponents haven’t bothered to tell us common folk about
it just yet. Can a whole movement in poetry just come along before
it gets any real definition of itself?
Of course, part of Flarf’s definition is the counter-cultural effort to mock poetic conventions.
Gary Sullivan says he wrote his first Flarf poem as a mock out of Poetry.com’s perpetual poetry
“contest” which was widely advertised in the poetry press. For a fee, your poem would be
included in an upcoming poetry book. Sullivan consciously tried to write a poem so bad
that the editors of Poetry.com would be forced to reject it, but he couldn’t stoop low
enough to exceed their low standards. The worst poems he could imagine could not solicit
a rejection, but the effort to write consciously bad poetry became addictive.
One of Sullivan’s early works was entitled “Flarf Balonacy Swingles.” The typos
are intentional. Flarf has been associated with intentional typos and offensive
language from the very first. Self-mockery is part of the Flarf culture, but
does Flarf have legs? When we get past the initial joke, is there enough
substance to Flarf to cause it to actually become the twenty-first century’s
first literary movement, as advertised, or is Flarf just a silly lark which
will die out when the joke wears off?
My personal reading is that it’s just too early to tell.
As far as I can tell, Gary Sullivan and his fellow Flarfists
are just spitting in the eye of high poetic culture for now,
making fun of our poetic conventions and daring us to take
them seriously. Sullivan is just a remake of Salvatore Dali,
custom-designed for our day. Still, it’s too early to count
Flarf out either. It may yet find a Dionysian niche and prosper there.
A more settled idea of what Flarf represents still has time to emerge.
What started out as pure silliness in Andy Warhol’s New York studios turned
into a real artistic movement, called Pop Art. Maybe Flarf will be the Pop
Art of this decade. It’s possible.
So, in the general spirit of the thing, here is my first Flarf poem.
Although it appears to be against the grain of Flarf culture, I will
justify it as a true Flarf poem, thus showing my contempt for even
counter-cultural Flarf conventions. First, the poem is lifted from
words written by another hand. Second, it is capable of multiple
levels of reading and Third, it makes little sense outside its natural
context and even there it’s full of useless advice. I take the poem
to have sufficient self-mockery in it to qualify it as vintage Flarf.
See if you don’t agree.
Pool Rules
by
Gary Lehmann
NO swimming without an adult present.
NO diving in the shallow end.
NO dunking or pushing.
NO running on the pool deck.
WAIT for the person in front to be
out of the way before diving.
NO glass on the pool deck.
NO peeing in the pool.
Flarf on dudes and dudettes.
Gary Lehmann does “something very interesting--wading through all the billions and billions
of bits of information for the little bits that clarify all the other bits.” Dr. John Z. Guzlowski,
Professor Emeritus, Eastern Illinois University
Prof. Earl J. Wilcox , founder of The Robert Frost Review has called Lehmann’s poetry,
“provocative, noteworthy, stunning in its audacity; revealing and riveting.”
Gary Lehmann: Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Gary Lehmann’s
essays, poetry and short stories are widely published. Books include The Span
I will Cross [Process Press, 2004] and Public Lives and Private Secrets [Foothills Publishing, 2005].
His most recent book is American Sponsored Torture [FootHills Publishing, 2007].
Visit his website at His Blog
Email: Gary Lehmann
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