Flarf/Spoetry Blog post

People will often fail to accept that flarf and spoetry are forms of poetry. They seem ridiculous, lewd, and not "beautiful" or "sophisticated" like more mainstream poetry. How could anyone, one might wonder, make poetry by exploiting search engines and blogs? This is fraud!

I would argue that, actually, it is not fraud because person A takes different phrases and combines them in a way that makes it unique to person A. I also believe that flarf and spoetry take more creativity to make and is often deeper than regular, "beautiful" poetry. I am currently working on a flarf play to present to class and it is very difficult to weave random phrases together to make a cohesive, well-flowing plot. I do admit that a lot of spoetry and flarf do not necessarily need to be cohesive, but I like the ones that are. The ones that are take something seemingly nonsensical and spreads a message. And the ridiculousness of the poems often make me laugh.

Unfortunately, I do think that flarf and spoetry can go "too far." What I mean by this is that it can be offensive. I do not care if flarf or spoetry have "bad words," because I say bad words all the time, but I am talking about including an event like 9-11 into the poem, like Gary Sullivan explains. The 9-11 references are of course to make fun of the media's portrayal of the awful event, but I am afraid that some people will just not find it funny. I want to know how a person who lost someone he/she cared about would react to the 9-11 references.

On the other hand, a part of me also thinks that the whole point of flarf and spoetry is to talk about what is not being said. No one would dare make fun of anything related to 9-11, but it cannot be ignored. This reminds me of racism-- people are scared to open up and talk about such things, but it benefits society to be talked about.

Anyways, what I also like about flarf and spoetry is that it takes those little annoyances in life (like e-mail spam) and turns it into something useful. It also questions what "poetry" really is. In my mind, poetry is an expression of self. When search engines are "exploited," I think it gathers the world's expressions and puts them together. Flarf and spoetry can apply to more people than a single authored poem. Thus, you know what flarf and spoetry should be changed to? WORLD POETRY!