Putting Down My Burger To Kick In the Door: An Appreciation of Flarf / Sharon Mesmer. 2013
A few excerpts (quotes):
Maria Damon noted: ” . . .flarf’s myth-of-origin revolves around a deliberately badly written’ poem, and flarf’s main
thru-line is not a unified technique but a sensibility — a sensibility of delighting in awkwardness and
wrongness.”
Gary wrote: “Flarf allowed me to turn away from the imitation poetry of the 90s and do something that I actually
cared about. I didn’t hate language writing or Gertrude Stein or New York School – I just hated the
imitations.”
And Drew observed: “Part of what we were reacting against was that poetry at that time seemed to
have been cut off from the realities (and therefore the poetry) of the social worlds we were actually,
presently immersed in. Part of what flarf did was break open deadening and pointlessly limited
conventional ideas of quality.”
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