Went to a day (Friday) of the Rethinking Poetics conference.
Highlights:
1. Rodrigo Toscano / Alan Golding's (tongue in cheek?) suggestion for a "report back from our industries." More useful to share experiences from within our positions as neoliberal-subject-people than rationalizing anxious circles through aesthetics around the scraps of privilege ($$ & social/intellectual capital) that are left?
2. Joshua Clover's insistence that we stave off endless nuance and keep antagonisms alive, and fresh.
3. Jena Osman's provisional term "echolocation."
Thinking a lot about MOBILIZING as an alternate term to either "antagonism" or the kumbaya-like "coming together" (preserve the antagonism, but orient it better, tactically?).
Wish I had been there for the ecology panel. Would've loved to hear Andrew Schelling talk about bioregionalism, in particular.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Manureism (or, some manure): A Response
I wrote this directly after I returned from AWP, in response to (and following the form of) Vanessa Place's piece at the Flarf v. Conceptualism panel. I do not know what Manureism is, but sometimes I think I see it places.
flarf is a cake fart.
conceptualism is shit.
what is manure?
TOWARD A COMMUNITY GARDEN
(through, not against, conceptualisms)
1. Conceptualism asks what is poetry.
1. Manureism asks where is poetry.
2. Conceptualism is allegorical. It is about things other than poetry itself.
2. http://gardennotesforrelocalisation.blogspot.com/
3. Conceptualism courts jest, but is not the king's dog.
3. Manure is a wolf dressed up in jester clothing. It cares for sheep.
4. Conceptualism is composed.
4. Manure is composted.
5. Conceptualism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
5. Manureism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
6. Conceptualism is sexy. The penis is a dildo.
6. Manureism = cross-pollination.
7. Conceptualism loves poetry enough to put it out of its misery.
7. Manure is your neighbor (who might annoy you, but, is still there).
8. Conceptualism wants.
8. Manureism eats.
9. Legit.
9. Trying things out.
10. Conceptualism has no answers, but is, instead, interrogative. Through the deployment of multiple strategies that serve to destabilize text (extant or made) via reframed reiterations and multiple sites of rhetorical deployment, conceptualism is neo-Kantian, epistemologically concerned with the ongoing sobject and the instantiation of radical evil, in other words, the affirmative will to evil that manifests the fact of will itself. In other words, the instantiation of that which is consciously contra-textual in the sense of all that has made text make contextual sense, the rendering immaterial of every materiality of poetry. The contra-text being the new con-text, con-, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the sense of being a cunt. Conceptualism is, as the term indicates, primarily a cortical engagement.
10. "Manureism seems like it would have to involve a certain degree of experimentation, like: will this straw insulate or smother this chard? But within a frame, right? Its desire is to nourish, explicitly. If it fails, or if it poisons, which is likely, or if it trips the sensitive intaker out, those are unexpected consequences of a fairly composed experiment. But conceptualism is of course wide open. Wait--is it? Does not having answers indicate openness?"
(Primarily a physical engagement.)
11. Conceptualism is Lacan in a mirror, the discourse of the slave.
11. Manureism is shit on a stick.
12. Conceptualism is Lacanian in the sense of desire by way of the Law by way of the petit objet a. As such. La donne
12. Manureism doesn't need you to have read Lacan. Probably.
13. Flarf plays Cuzin while playing it off, it speaks to people in people-voice okay, it’s the first to suggest titty beer bong hits and butterscotch Jell-O shots, it wants to stay up late and bitch bitch bitch, it might bleed out but nothing’s permanently stained, it surfs like point break without leaving a wake, it goes Louey-Louey and blows O.C. pretty, it would like you to like it, really?, it wants to be kinda Dada but it’s not that fucking desperate, wants to play it black but mostly lays trick pussy.
13. Conceptualism repeats the above.
14. In this sense, conceptualism is a fart.
14. Manure is poop.
15. Ron Silliman does not like conceptualism.
15. Dale Smith likes manure.
16. The best conceptualism is failure.
16. The best manure is neither virtuostic nor failure, though it may be both.
17. Poetry looks like conceptualism.
17. Poetry smells.
Q&A
18. Conceptualism and flarf evade the question of world (/community) peace and global (/local) justice (as ill-formed as it can be). Their stance is too often flatly ironic (sarcasm); a disguised form of earnestness (look at me mom, I get it).
18. Manureism does not evade the question, but engages with it at the level of artifice (linguistic, social, political). Manureism is deep irony: not what else does this mean (pointing to context), but what else might this do? (activating context)
Manureism cannot pass around conceptualism, and may have to go through it.
The two may also work alongside one another, performing different work.
In this sense manureism represents a possibility for love, in poetry.
April 22nd, 2010
*note: Many of the individual writers and work under the terms "flarf" and "conceptualism" might also be "shitty."
Many might be if they were situated differently.
How to sort out waste from waste; the plastic bottle from the apple core (from the banana peel)?
flarf is a cake fart.
conceptualism is shit.
what is manure?
TOWARD A COMMUNITY GARDEN
(through, not against, conceptualisms)
1. Conceptualism asks what is poetry.
1. Manureism asks where is poetry.
2. Conceptualism is allegorical. It is about things other than poetry itself.
2. http://gardennotesforrelocalisation.blogspot.com/
3. Conceptualism courts jest, but is not the king's dog.
3. Manure is a wolf dressed up in jester clothing. It cares for sheep.
4. Conceptualism is composed.
4. Manure is composted.
5. Conceptualism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
5. Manureism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
6. Conceptualism is sexy. The penis is a dildo.
6. Manureism = cross-pollination.
7. Conceptualism loves poetry enough to put it out of its misery.
7. Manure is your neighbor (who might annoy you, but, is still there).
8. Conceptualism wants.
8. Manureism eats.
9. Legit.
9. Trying things out.
10. Conceptualism has no answers, but is, instead, interrogative. Through the deployment of multiple strategies that serve to destabilize text (extant or made) via reframed reiterations and multiple sites of rhetorical deployment, conceptualism is neo-Kantian, epistemologically concerned with the ongoing sobject and the instantiation of radical evil, in other words, the affirmative will to evil that manifests the fact of will itself. In other words, the instantiation of that which is consciously contra-textual in the sense of all that has made text make contextual sense, the rendering immaterial of every materiality of poetry. The contra-text being the new con-text, con-, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the sense of being a cunt. Conceptualism is, as the term indicates, primarily a cortical engagement.
10. "Manureism seems like it would have to involve a certain degree of experimentation, like: will this straw insulate or smother this chard? But within a frame, right? Its desire is to nourish, explicitly. If it fails, or if it poisons, which is likely, or if it trips the sensitive intaker out, those are unexpected consequences of a fairly composed experiment. But conceptualism is of course wide open. Wait--is it? Does not having answers indicate openness?"
(Primarily a physical engagement.)
11. Conceptualism is Lacan in a mirror, the discourse of the slave.
11. Manureism is shit on a stick.
12. Conceptualism is Lacanian in the sense of desire by way of the Law by way of the petit objet a. As such. La donne
12. Manureism doesn't need you to have read Lacan. Probably.
13. Flarf plays Cuzin while playing it off, it speaks to people in people-voice okay, it’s the first to suggest titty beer bong hits and butterscotch Jell-O shots, it wants to stay up late and bitch bitch bitch, it might bleed out but nothing’s permanently stained, it surfs like point break without leaving a wake, it goes Louey-Louey and blows O.C. pretty, it would like you to like it, really?, it wants to be kinda Dada but it’s not that fucking desperate, wants to play it black but mostly lays trick pussy.
13. Conceptualism repeats the above.
14. In this sense, conceptualism is a fart.
14. Manure is poop.
15. Ron Silliman does not like conceptualism.
15. Dale Smith likes manure.
16. The best conceptualism is failure.
16. The best manure is neither virtuostic nor failure, though it may be both.
17. Poetry looks like conceptualism.
17. Poetry smells.
Q&A
18. Conceptualism and flarf evade the question of world (/community) peace and global (/local) justice (as ill-formed as it can be). Their stance is too often flatly ironic (sarcasm); a disguised form of earnestness (look at me mom, I get it).
18. Manureism does not evade the question, but engages with it at the level of artifice (linguistic, social, political). Manureism is deep irony: not what else does this mean (pointing to context), but what else might this do? (activating context)
Manureism cannot pass around conceptualism, and may have to go through it.
The two may also work alongside one another, performing different work.
In this sense manureism represents a possibility for love, in poetry.
April 22nd, 2010
*note: Many of the individual writers and work under the terms "flarf" and "conceptualism" might also be "shitty."
Many might be if they were situated differently.
How to sort out waste from waste; the plastic bottle from the apple core (from the banana peel)?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
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