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Here's a poem I wrote in the following manner (or something like this -- it was actually several months ago, so some of the following details may be incorrect):
1) I took the entirely of Kenneth Goldsmith's book called Soliloquy -- it can be found at ubu.com -- and put it into Word. Goldsmith's book was written by recording everything that he said for an entire week and transcribing it. He originally presented it in a gallery context in NY -- the walls were printed with the entire text -- at which point he lost many friends quite quickly.
2) I ran the Word "auto-summarizer" on the text, which reduced the text to its most "important" elements. In basic AI, this means that the program picked up on the phrases repeated the most and preserved them. I had done this with Kenny's text earlier, and it produced a string of "yeah, yeah, uh huh, yeah..." etc., because after all most of what we say is a bunch of grunt words like this.
3) I ran the resulting text through an online translation program. It was translated into French, then from French into German, then from German into Italian, and from Italian back into English. Each language left its mark on the text, though in the end I was left with pretty much English.
4) I broke the poem into lines, stanzas, and even section breaks. I attended to an "ambient" aesthetics, knowing that for the most part I would not be presenting the most high voltage literary experience but that periodically an eruption would occur, and I had to frame and accentuate it. I didn't change a word.
So, the question is, is this "just language poetry" or is it at the service of some new idea we've been chucking around called "digital poetics"? Your opinions on this question are requested, and matter. (I'm serious -- I want to know whether it's worthy of appearing in my next book or does it end up as one of those projects lost to cyberia...)
BUOA NIGHT OF CHERYL
I. Page of right.
Page of right? Page of
right. Sink. Page of right? Paris.
Page of right.
Sink.
Cheryl. Enough. Uh,
completely with the scheisse.
Page of right? Huh?
Sink. Sink of the sink. It
that it goes to
that one to
think
in order to go
that it, uh, case in sleep? Cheryl
thanks.
Remembered?
Little
a small Juste.
Cheryl. It disturbs appreciate
an interesting type. If we are it
situates to you in
the city center. Sink. Sink.
Over, uh, it is the inner
part, that it
is small yakking. The famous Hebrew, uh...
In great part.
Huh.
Man of the OH
—I appreciate this type.
Thankses.
Uh, for four. Cheryl.
This type is
large. This type
is completely large.
I realize like uh, I know them.
They are of right. Remembered? Cheryl?
I, uh, has uh
the new facts and
bagel. Huh
d ‘uh. They are Moscow
to go too much towards the bottom.
I will feed
myself.
Thankses. Saying this Cher
that at all I have read this book.
They
read five books to you
that they will not never
read. Ampere-hour, I will
read it. Thankses. Page of right.
II. A Lot
A lot in all the
case, uh, knows
them. Uh,
not. Page of right.
People not law.
People not law.
III. 6000 we spend.
Bruce. HE
Bruce, highly. Sink.
Uh, has happened
the night. Uh, calmly
for an other
artist. Cheryl. Cheryl.
Little heel of Marantz little heel,
that it is firm
in more with the work group.
Huh?
Cheryl.
Uh, appreciate periods.
Which thing?
Hello
standard. They are remembered
of Cheryl,
right of the heel? I
have seen Tom, page of
right of the right page.
Sink of the sink of the sink.
Heels of Droite?
Sink.
Us they are not any are here are not every
multiculturalism possible
here of the acknowledgment
of the delivery to the
right. They have lacked in
great part, uh, begun from
the art that yesterday
evening. We speak... Thankses. Sink.
Bruce Andrew.
It will not happen.
Page
of right. Sink.
Page of right.
Marjorie.
Marjorie has said that gone to that one,
that gone equally in a such way.
A beautiful type. Substance de Nizza
di Nizza, huh? Sink. Sink. Sink of the sink of the sink.
Page of right. Corrected, that tomorrow you will
see. Sink.
Sink. They are of right. HE.
Sad type.
I will explain the luppolo to you.
Ampareheure, thankses. Huh d‘
uh. Cheryl.
They are modification to continue.
It is good Uh like ewww
along, how much
time, andante to
you? The approval so as
to the uh, it has
them leaves sees you. Hmmmm.
They are way to go to these dogs. How much time to go it?
IV. Well-being of the dogs.
A small uniform water?
Interesting HE,
ice-skates, man. Thankses. Sink.
Therefore if it even small track necessity
to these dogs
a serious way. Sink.
Neapolitanisch, enough.
The EC, that mine
comes from the bet. It bet.
Girl of the ** of temporizzazione of ** of it
the girl of the ** of temporizzazione of ** of the
mine of it the mine of
the bet of it mine of the
bet of it mine. Paris. Paris
Equal
De OF it mine. Sink. Sink.
Types of it mine of the types of it mine.
Poor girl, page of
right? Huh d ‘uh.
Digitare from Nizza? Right
of the Vcr. de Nizza?
It
my
sink of bet. Sink. Pleasant graceful, huh?
H»E Cheryl
I ‘ sig.
C ‘ my bets.
Paris. Paris.
Page of right. Here the
ampareheure, cause is a
Juste here.
Uh, like ‘ acces of the
tanks of coloring? Sink. In great part. Sink? Uh
task that is...
Job...
Page of right. Page of right. Page of right.
Huh. Huh d ‘ Uh.
To spray outside, why taken to sure not not even one hour you
and, to the uh and, uh, in order to
learn the line of the HTML. The right page
not not good it. Page of right? Ouais of ouais of ouais of Ouais, huh of uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Huh d ‘ Uh. Page of right. Page of right. Sink? I will make that one.
If I work, I become paid.
H». Muff from the other substance. Sink. Page of right. Here the man fills
up them. To feel itself. Ampere-hour, page of right, Cheryl. Page of right.
Huh? Cheryl?
Buoa night of Cheryl.
Know what the most downloaded thingamabob on Arras.net is? Try: a .pdf of 5 translations of Anglo-Saxon poetry that I did in 1995 when I was a graduate student at the CUNY Grad Center. I never thought they were that hot, but 590 people at least looked at it in the past month. Maybe you should too:
http://www.arras.net/translations.pdf
Of course, I understand if you want to pass -- my guess is that a good 99.9% of those who downloaded it were merely trying to ace there exams -- my translations are pretty accurate representations of the text, though at one point I have Scooby Doo come flying down on a bobsled to put out the fire on King Olaf of Sweden's big toe.
What did I read this morning, when I woke up way too early and had gotten bored working on the redesign of THE BLOG? Well, a book by David Choe -- the critics rave:
I hate david choe why? Because he makes me feel
old,tired,talentless, and unwilling to take chances.
As you might expect, Choe is young,energetic,
prodigiously talented, and takes many chances.
his use (abuse?) of the English language is fresh and uncontrived;
His schizophrenically restless art school technique
( dropping macaroni noodles, seamlessly blending clip art,
photo collage and childhood scrawling)
is startlingly unpretentious; and his utter fearless approach
to sexuality is a cold blast of water in the desert of inhibition
and near-puritanical sexual avoidance inherent
in almost all of American media.
-Robet Young editor of The Comics Interpreter
I couldn't have said it better myself. He really is an awful speller, not much of a typographer -- but none of these are faults as every "mistake" he makes is more interesting than most of our successes (take a look at the Bauhausian angles of this page, for instance, and tell me if they make you want to get off the couch and party). There is a fantastic little sequence called "Yoffee Toffee" about his trip to the beach in Gaza and visit with the black Jews of Israel in the town of Dimona. The writing is really fresh, not at all indebted to the Beatnik line but all L.A.
If you are interested in this guy check out www.davidchoe.com. And here's my first attempt at putting an image in THE BLOG.
The painting at the right, btw, is by Wyndham Lewis, English Vorticist. I don't know the title of it -- if anyone does please email me.
Other stuff that I've been up to -- I've recently completed two detournements of NYTIMES webpages using the texts of key Situationist Raoul Vaneigem.
Blair Presents Dossier on Iraq's Biological Weapons (Sept. 24.)
Daschle Denounces Bush Remarks on Iraq as Partisan (Sept. 25)
I hope, when the historians of the future who "leave blanks in their writing... I mean for things they didn't know" (Pound), who most likely be cockroaches and will not know a whole lot about us humans, this series based on the Times will prove a valuable resource.
I don't have much mind or time to write anything write now -- so here is the text of my inaugural St. Mark's column on internet poetry, titled "Surfin' Scheherazade":
“Saga on moody doom? No, a gas!” writes Ross (Essay Assessor) Eckler about 2002: A Palindrome Story – whose 2,000+ odd words read the same forwards as backwards. (“2002 is not only a marvel of ingenuity: it is also funny, sexy, and full of surprises,” chimes in Harry Mathews with a more sober assessment.) When the cowards at Spineless Books finally get to producing a print version, you will miss the ability to hyperlink between the appearances of the many characters (with names like Bob, Otto, and Babs – no Nada!), which helps in this brief, convoluted story that includes 3 plot summaries. But unlike James’ The Ambassadors, there are no chapters to print out of order!
The latest thing to fall onto my welcome mat, next to the free daily “Happy Mail” lessons in the Korean language that come out prismatically scrambled in my xenophobic Outlook but for a few shards of English (“field trip / in trouble // feed / ostrich” seems intended for some other Manchurian candidate than myself), the cleverly disguised ads for bootleg Viagra and anti-spam software (disguised as… spam?), and, just today, a website that will help me buy Andy Warhol prints from French auctioneers (the same people that brought us David Bowie’s watercolors, no doubt)…
Anyway, here’s a gorgeous, richly decadent thing called Oculart that might resemble the book cover of a recent edition of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita initially but, to us Flash folks and to anyone willing to surrender during work hours, has an engrossing charm — the best thing since Neverending Story, she said — and the soundtrack, moody and variable at first, happily dies away after a few minutes. As one half expects on a site as visually rich as this – ditto for the various incarnations of Aurelia Harvey’s legendary entropy8.com – the writing is so-so, of the “we planted truth roots on an odd date palm” variety (and I quote) – but I likes anyway. The later sections, like “nake brunch” (is this a rye typo?) and “luxe pattern” are the most writing-heavy, but I somewhat prefer the simpler sections like “cat whisky,” starring a Garboesque feline with a Mannerist neck, because it does… nothing… one just stares at it… clicks around… and scratches. (For fast connections only – the downloads are huge!)
So you like to read? Well, people have been asking me about alienated.net — the postnuke site geared toward chat-room-like discussion about “poetechnology” or anything worth soap-boxing about — which started with a lot of promise a year and a half ago and which we ubu listservers thought would inspire us to work together to create some über-site for visual poetics… this seems like decades ago now, before 9/11, Martha Stewart, the rattling of the small press industry in Canada – Darren Wershler-Henry, creator of and most active contributor to the site, got swamped by the mess, being the engagé editor of Coach House Books – not to mention my shoulder going out with Patrick-Rafter like pains, thus keeping me from typing more than a few monosyllables a day. But the site’s still going – “Now We're Talking Vulva?” reads the title of the latest announcement (I’ll pass on explaining, but it’s an mp3 site!).
In my time of visiting alienated.et, the most active conversation has been one of the more recent – the red hot hunt for the author “Annoya,” a parody of Christian Bök’s Griffin Award winning Eunoia (C$80,000!), the hardcore Oulipian poem that is all the rage north of Loss Glazier. Young ubu starlet Angela Rawlings seemed hot on the trail when last I checked — tattooing clues to her abdomen lest her hard drive crash — but it’s been quieter lately. Steve McCaffery and Gregory Bett’s North American Centre for Interdisciplinary Poetics, while a bit less hip – Archibald Lampman, anyone? – is also kicking, with prose styles ranging from the vertiginously purple to the Perloffian modernisms-r-us and much in between. I’m happy to see Pierre Borduas’ Automatiste “Refus Global” manifesto there myself: “To hell with holy water and the French-Canadian tuque!” Yes, I haaate that tuque!
But I’m afraid of Canadians, so when I want to relax I turn to Tom Raworth’s great “doodles” where you can overhear Jennifer Moxley and Steve Evans as they discuss the fate of the “dominant poetic” over yogurt and muesli, or maybe saunter over to Floating Sushi to test my typing against a Tetris-meets-rebus-like-game-thing (ok, I don’t know how to describe it) that is based on actual street signs from San Francisco (i.e. “juiceit,” “discoland,” etc.). Unless you’ve never flipped on a computer, you’ve probably already heard of Yong Hae Chang Heavy Industries – the best thing to happen to Korea since, well, the Happy Mail – and witnessed in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Korean (your pick) one of this Whitmaniac artist’s fast-downloading, jazz-propelled and highly charismatic Flash pieces that make you want to take to the streets with a bottle of Samantha’s algee drink and fake dreadlocks and shout (in six languages) “I’m not going to take it anymore!” Or: “Let’s LOVE!” Or: “Chet Baker was suicided by society!” Yeah.
So I haven’t hit any sites that could be called “poetry” proper, but I promise that next time, should there be a next time, I will – I just need an angle, friends. It’s no secret that some of the best things on the net are also the stupidest, but there’s nothing worse than stupid poetry, even when recited by a talking vu… by a talking computer (cough). But the great thing about the web is how some really bad ideas – for “art,” for “design” – are just there before you know it, troubling any certainties, should you let them be troubled, about what’s Richter and what’s clutter in this fluctuating world of taste, value and habitas. Maybe not. But I’m approaching a thousand words with this thing, and have to catch a bus to New Jersey. Please do check out the Yong Hae Chang site (now why didn’t I start with that?) – I’ll be more organized next time!