Explicatin'

Kitty Goes Postal--
wants pizza.
Kitty has hat & cape and looks
like a magician . . .

Observe kitty eating a slice of pizza.
"Eat some free pizza, Kitty!" YUM
(pizza man impatient at the door)

BAD KITTY LIST, FOOD RELATED
_____will not use my ninja kitty paw strike
_____naked on sofa with rapidly-cooling pizza
_____monster clowns with KITTY-FACES!

"Take off your shoes, bitch"
Base Mood, icky. Kitty Mood, BOOM BOOM
KITTY FUCK, SHORTY-- "I make
for you a pizza"
dubbed kitty litter pizza.
(Whatever you do keep away from the Kitty Litter pizza

Just had the stupidest idea--
Make KITTY order pizza!
The kitty brings the pizza on its
paw, possibly
cold pizza

Send kind and healing thoughts
to Pizza Kitty
one sick kitty
cute blonde baffled pizza delivery . . .

Obverse of Kitty:
I have a bottomless pit for pizza
there is a pizza bar on ship
word is they're living off
an "all pizza diet"
Kitty won't be so finicky
When she's served this new stuffed pizza!

Expensive pizza date with Kitty.
Everyone ate pizza and soda.
Indigestible Japanese pizza.
Long, annoying lecture about being
A bad world kitty. "What turns you on, Pizza Kitty?"
Mommy does not like to get kitty kisses
while she is trying to eat pizza . . .

Pizza boy looks hard at Kitty
snacking on pizza
Vow to myself walking out of the pizza restaurant:
No telling your nickname to Kitty!

Super Kitty Cat Pics Archives
Asleep :.: Fishy Fountains [1] Delivery Boys [3] :. .:
Expensive Kitty Bed [3] :. .: :. .: Pizza

Kitty in some kind
of army uniform-everytime we contemplate
making pizza we remember this incident:
"Kitty, come down!" Pizza
all over our bodies.
Then the pizza guy (not the cute
pizza guy, worse luck)
comes to the door and says, "Peace, Kitty"

:. .: DEPENDS ON WHETHER I
CATCH THE SCENT OF PIZZA!!! :. .:

“Pizza Kitty” by Rodney Koeneke is my all time favorite Flarf poem, and it is also the first poem that read/saw. It was introduced to me over a year ago by a friend, before I was even aware of the Flarf movement. Out of all of the poems I’ve read, “Pizza Kitty” has the least depth to it. Some Flarf poets try to send a message underneath the strange and humorous lines, but Koeneke’s only sends a message of a Kitty who loves pizza. One thing I really enjoy about this poem is the way the sentences were juxtaposed and which sentences were chosen. These two aspects create the feel that this poem is being told from the eyes of a “kitty”. For example the lines, “Base Mood, icky. Kitty Mood, BOOM BOOM/KITTY FUCK, SHORTY—‘I make/for you a pizza’/dubbed kitty litter pizza” there is emphasis on the energy of a young kitten bouncing around “making a pizza.” This kitty litter pizza shows the joking nature of youth. Other lines that have this same emphasis focus on what the kitty is doing while they are expressed in capital letters.

Out of the whole poem, my favorite line is “monster clowns with KITTY-FACES!” because of the way Koeneke reads it. Choosing which poem to explicate was a tough decision because I wanted to find a poem that had a written and spoken version. Most Flarf is either only performed or written. “Atomic Bitch Wax” by Sharon Mesmer is another favorite of mine, but I could not find a written version to explicate. When I first watched Koeneke’s video performance of this poem I thought he was just rambling goofy phrases. Listening to a spoken version makes the text laugh out loud funny. The best part about Flarf poets is they don’t take themselves too seriously. Flarf is relaxing after a hard day’s work. If they took themselves seriously, poems like “Pizza Kitty” wouldn’t be funny to others. So, to all you Flarf poets out there, keep doing what you’re doing – it’s brilliant.

Flarf...Art?

Finding a piece of artwork similar to Flarf has been the most difficult part of this project. Although Flarf poetry has evolved into a collective, a movement; Flarf art is hidden from view. While exploring the Internet I discovered a blog entry from Greg Cook. In it he speaks of his own struggles to name this recent style of sculptures.



He then says, “what this new process most resembles is a style of poetry that’s developed in the past decade or so: flarf.” Flarf collages words and phrases while this type of sculpture collages “fragmented forms, torn pictures and clashing sounds.” His ideas led me to an exploration of the New Museum. In April of 2008, the New Museum opened an exhibition called “Unmonumental.” Each piece in the show is Flarfy. They are described as layers of images, sounds, and Internet-based art. Now I will actually to explicate a piece from this exhibition.


full view seen HERE

This is probably the most simple collage piece in the gallary, however, it exhibits the most Flarf qualities. Jonathan Hernandez’s collage, Mural was created in 2006. This is a collage of approximatly fifty photographs. Each picture represents a different aspect of culture. Although each picture is unique, together a chain of similarities are shown and that is what Flarf is all about. Most pictures are juxtaposed next to a picture with similar aspects. For example, a picture of a raindrop into a puddle is placed next to an image of an object splashing into the ocean. Another example, that is quite humorous, is the poster with the word “Shit!” juxtaposed next to the “Parental Advisory” sign. For Flarf to work, sentences must be placed in an intelligible order. Otherwise Flarf poems would be nothing more than choppy, edgy obscure sentences only trying to make sense.

Over the whole collage is a painted image of, what looks like, a fly. This fly is the main connection of these pictures. In most collages images overlap to create a large picture. In Hernandez’s piece none of these pictures overlap, each is given its own space to contribute to the overall image. But, this fly over laps all. This reminds me of the saying, “the fly on the wall.” No one notices the small fly on the wall, but that fly sees everything, it sees CD covers, animals, nature. I believe this is the least Flarf-like aspect of Hernandez’s work because Flarf usually doesn’t have an over lying image that ties the piece together.

Here are some other pieces in “Unmonumental” that are worth looking at:


Mark Bradford - Helter Skelter I, 2007


Kim Jones – Untitled, 1994-2004


Jim Lambie, Split Endz (wig mix), 2005

Create:

A Day in the life of Hemophilia
Hemophilia is a rare inherited bleeding disorder creating
healthy cells from flakes of skin;
corn-flake shaped snow crystals
are a type of frost forming on
questions in college-level courses:
“Were the unicorns unhappy with then-President Bush?”
Yet here and there people claim, like Blake,
to have seen fairy funerals.
Everybody hates funerals,
Piss in my cornflakes,
piss hell.
The present hell, is somewhere in the heart of potatoes
in a bucket with high stalks.
When you have practiced stalking by day
at night-time it may not be possible to stalk in the upright position.

Did he ask me as a friend or could it be more?
Rush replies, “I don't know. I can't read Hebrew”
To which I replied... "Patient ADD,
this domain is not for sale, so stop asking.”
The technician got tired of waiting,
put a butterfly band-aid on my extreme
enlargement of limbs and other body parts.
Life with hemophilia is better,
brighter and more secure than ever.

----------------------------------------

This is my completely obscure, unorderly, strange Flarf poem. I initially started with the search of one word, “hemophilia.” I was then started to follow the example of another Flarf poet, whose poems contain a certain scheme, in which the last word of each line is used to create the beginning of the next line. This actually turned out to be extremely difficult because Google searches for one particular word were both tasteless and boring or merely a standard definition (ex: Hemophilia is a rare inherited bleeding disorder). My poem started out as more of a chopped up research paper than Flarf. I then began to expand my searches to phrases like “unicorns and Bush” and “snowing cornflakes.” This helped me greatly, and my research paper on hemophilia evolved into a journey through funerals, hell, and a trip to the doctors… I think. This poem is pretty vague and doesn’t have a true message, but it was quite an experience to create.

Read, Listen, Watch:

I have read:
Jelly Doughnuts Especially for Chanukah - here
Tarzan Workshop - here
Gary Sullivan - Mm-hmm

And many pieces from the website Jacket Magazine such as:
Nada Gordon - Lick My Face, A Gumby episode…
Chickee Chickston - Truckin’ Poem, My Mary Oliver, and My Kangaroo
Anne Boyer - A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Benjamin Friedlander - Why Do the Jews Reject Jesus as Their Savior?

I have listened to:
Nada Gordon - My Favorite Things Redux, I Love Men
Rod Smith - No, My Name is Gary Sullivan. I Own a Mansion and a Yacht, War and Pee
Sharon Mesmer - Jake Gyllenhaal's Dog, I Accidentally Ate Some Chicken and Now I'm in Love with Harry Whittington, Atomic Bitch Wax (a play)
Gary Sullivan - Why You Got Flipped Off in Traffic, Once Upon a Time in Nebraska

Watched on Youtube:

Rodney Koeneke - Pizza Kitty
(one of my favorite flarf experiences)

I Sought and I Found. (RESEARCH:)

As I stated before Gary Sullivan entered a (what is now considered Flarf) poem in a contest on Poetry.com. Feeling as though it was just a mere marketing scheme by the creators of the site, Sulliven intentionally entered this vulgar nonsensical poem to test Poetry.com’s standards of a creative poem. “Mm-hmm” was Sullivan’s first documented flarf poem. Those who reviewed his poem called it, “imaginative, and a fresh new perspective on life” (here). Since then Flarf has evolved into the first movement of the 21st century. Gary Sullivan has also extended his writing to Flarf plays such as “Gray Matter” and “PPL in a Depot” which you can view here.

Flarf uses the internet and all of its glory to its fullest. Usually search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc are used to create these delicious word salads. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, a word salad is “a mixture of seemingly meaningful words that together signify nothing” (Encyclopedia Britannica). It is also very similar to Spoetry (Spam poetry,) where poets use spam emails to create their works. Early Flarf is more juvenile due to focus on bodily functions, intentional typos, “internet talk:” lolz, omgz, TTFN, etc, politics, and most contained offensive language. Even though many consider Flarf inappropriate, some believe it represents a clear new and sharp view of what our culture has evolved into. Especially since Flarf uses the language of our people today, old, young, naive, intelligent. The crazy phrases in Flarf poetry are found through the web, a medium which connects millions. Maybe, someone will even see my blog and use my ideas as an example in a project similar to my own.

K. Silem Mohammad wrote an article on “sought poetry.” In his writing he explains that Flarf is more sought than found. A found poem is something that one “stumbles upon and says, hey that’s poetry” (here). Mohammad states sought poem is the “result of invasive surgeries performed on already mangled bodies” (still here). Flarf poets are surgeons of language. They sort through the words that make some people cringe or even faint and they create a story. These poets give the mangled bodies a new life.

Relfection:

Flarf is unlike anything else I have read. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when choosing Flarf as my topic. All I wanted was something interesting enough to keep me going through the end of the year. And that is exactly what I got. Flarf poetry is almost like jumping into an ocean of insanity, filled with waves of vulgar language and ideas. The creation of Flarf is what first intrigued me, and the reason I chose this subject for my final project.

What is Flarf, you may ask? It’s a poetry movement created in late 2000 by a man named Gary Sullivan initially as a joke. Flarf contains no strict rules or guidelines. It is, exactly what it sounds like, a whole load of Flarf (definitely not Fluff.) I was lucky enough to have Willies blog from last year to help guide me through this project. As he stated, it’s hard to find Flarf for there are no books dedicated to it and most of it is performed. Reading and viewing these pieces give the mind a chance to dive into a mess of gargled up poetry. Or can it even be considered poetry?

Similar to Slam Poetry (Michael!) Flarf poetry is best performed. (View here or Youtube.) Listening to this Flarf is more humorous than just reading, because most lines are very dry, awkward, or vulgar. In Nada Gordon’s “My Favorite Things Redux,” she sings the lines of her poem to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from the movie The Sound of Music. When reading poems such as Chickee Chickston’s “My Mary Oliver,” one may think the finds of the poem would be lovely and nice as it seems to be about a woman or love interest. However lines range from, “My Mary Oliver has three stomachs:greater omentum, peritoneum, and kitty cat tummy” to “My Mary Oliver knows who black people are.” Juxtaposition is what makes or breaks Flarf poems. Most of these poems are already pushing the line of literature, so meticulous collaging of the lines throughout these pieces that give them a special oomph, and make them bearable.

"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 (No Relation to Mr. Cook) The Boston Phoenix.

I found this quote on Willie's blog and thought I would share it. Although some people think Flarf is garbage, I think it’s a way to glorify the bad by favoring typos or showing off the strange elements in our world. Flarf is a comedy, but due to the difference in personal humor some people can’t stand it. Flarf is no family movie, but it is definitely worth the read. Cook also refers the technique behind the poetry as “Google sculpting.” This reference places this type of poetry as art. Poets in the Flarf collective creatively place each line with and open minds as they string these poems together.

Just a Little Intro:

First off I just want to let everyone know, I’m just a student doing this blog for a class project. I’m no Flarf champion; I just want to pass my English class. So let me start by introducing you to this glorious subject.

Welcome to Flarf.