kottke.org

...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.

kottke.org posts about flarf

 

Flarf

Flarf is a form of poetry made by combining together phrases from random web searches. Here's an early example:

"Yeah, mm-hmm, it's true
big birds make
big doo! I got fire inside
my 'huppa'-chimp(TM)
gonna be agreessive, greasy aw yeah god
wanna DOOT! DOOT!
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!"

Flarf started off as a joke but then these joke poems that people were coming up with "evolved from 'bad' to 'sort of great'".

Edge Books publisher Rod Smith, a poet himself, says he feels the [Flarf] collective is prompting a bit of anarchy in the poetry world by widening the vocabulary of what is permissible. "Aesthetic judgments about what's bad in a very hierarchal society are usually serving upper-class people with a certain amount of privilege," he says. "So for a bunch of poets who are very well schooled in a variety of traditions of American poetry to take what's considered bad and throw that at people is a very interesting maneuver. It's not simply bad poetry; it's quote-unquote bad poetry written by people who know how to write poetry."

By Jason Kottke    Jul 29, 2009    flarf   poetry

kottke.org, quickly...

The best way to get a sense of what kottke.org is all about is to head to the front page or check out some random entries from the archives.

Looking for work?

See more on the Job Board.

Tags, tags, tags

Many posts on kottke.org have been "tagged" with keywords, which activity results in collections of related posts like sports, infoviz, or best of.

Recently popular tags (last 3 weeks)

The 2000s (14)    post updates (44)    video (746)    USA (13)    movies (1072)    books (737)    science (634)    lists (646)    food (666)    photography (821)    art (389)    best of (372)    sports (486)    advertising (178)    maps (234)

All-time popular tags

movies (1072)    photography (821)    video (746)    books (737)    NYC (694)    food (666)    lists (646)    science (634)    design (612)    sports (486)    music (405)    art (389)    business (382)    best of (372)    TV (370)

Useful favorites

photography (821)    economics (202)    lists (646)    best of (372)    infoviz (163)    food (666)    NYC (694)    firstworldproblems (4)    cities (135)    restaurants (188)    video (746)    timelapse (3)    interviews (256)    language (272)    maps (234)    fashion (164)    NSFW (63)    remix (207)

Random tags

weblog (3)    mpaa (3)    Stanley Kubrick (14)    thedeck (4)    Rene Magritte (3)    creativity (10)    moby (2)    heatherchamp (4)    gel (2)    Desktop Tower Defense (7)    fedex (4)    dysonairblade (2)    Jad Abumrad (5)    crayonphysics (2)    constitution (3)