Flarf

I really like the idea of flarf. I believe that this is due to the fact that I am unable to fully understand deep and meaningful poetry, therefore, I do not enjoy it. It is like with anything else in the world, when people do not understand it, they tend to have hostile feelings towards it. That is how I am with poetry. The reason I like flarf is because it takes all of those things about poetry that is, in its own way, humorous when it is taken seriously and makes it into a complete joke. All of the poetic licenses are made into an exaggeration and produced in order to be laughed at.

The history of the origin of flarf is quite interesting to me as well. Gary Sullivan first submitted his “bad” poetry to Poetry.com to see if there was an actual filter in what was being presented or if anything could be posted up with an extremely large fee. The spam poetry was being spammed. And, of course, Sullivan’s bad poem was “published” even though it technically did not have merit. When it was sent to Sullivan, the people from Poetry.com made it seem like his poem was mulled over and reviewed very critically before it was chosen to be displayed in some sort of book. I think the idea of spamming these people with poetry that is “unfit” to be considered real and they in turn accept it as something that is wonderful instead of the joke that it is shows that the people at Poetry.com are simply out there to get your money.

I love this aspect of flarf. I am a very silly and goofy person and I love the fact that flarf is basically a huge joke that is being played on the poetry world. I suppose I enjoy this so much because I cannot take “real” poetry seriously because I do not have the intellectual capacity to find it meaningful that I find the joke on poetry hilarious.

Since this class is about writing tools and how they affect what is being written, it is important to talk about that aspect, as well. The internet has a lot of impact on flarf because search engines are used to produce the words that will be used in the poems. The interest of flarf has also grown due to the internet which causes people’s works to become more accessible to the public. So, obviously the computer is a main writing tool of flarf. I was about to comment that flarf would be impossible without modern writing technologies, but I am sure that this could be done by taking random phrases from letters and newspapers if it were 100 years ago. Flarf can be achieved through many means. Even though flarf has come about quite recently, it could have been achieved many years ago. The only thing needed for flarf are words from another source that an author can string together to make something goofy.