Flarf and Spoetry

I loved the story about how flarf came about. All throughout high school I used to get those poetry.com e-mails about how if I submitted poetry I could receive a $50 hard cover book with my poem along with all the other great poetry submissions the Web site had chosen to be published. To be fair though, some of the flarf on the first Web site we were supposed to look at seemed like actual good obscure poetry. Sometimes it's interesting to me to see what is considered "art." While a lot of the flarf on the Web site was terribly funny, other poems seemed that they could be taken seriously.

While reading the examples of flarf, I was reminded a lot of other literary movements like dada or stream of consciousness writing. The first thing that came to mind when learning about flarf was Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I also thought about William S. Burroughs and some of the nonsensical, drug-induced passages from "Naked Lunch." So in that way, flarf could actually be seen as funny yet serious literature.

It took more time than I expected to actually produce a piece of flarf or spoetry. I think this also contributes to my viewing flarf as more of a real art form. While the concept seems really easy it takes some time to find and place and add in your own touches to the writing that the google search turns up and my flarf definitely didn't turn out as well as some of the examples I read.

It's interesting to take note that reading spoetry most times makes perfect sense to me, meaning it's amazing just how much the internet has changed our understanding of texts. While somebody without a computer may be confused by spoetry, I found myself laughing and identifying with a lot of the lines used since I had seen them often.