Harriet celebrates Poetry Month with this hilarious post by con man Kenny Goldsmith, in which he makes good on his promise of “uncreative writing” by quoting a vacuous, jargon-ridden exercise in what passes for criticism in the back alleys of academe. “Conceptual writing signaled the end of the era of individual voice,” opines Ms. Johanna Drucker. “Poetics of the swarm, mind-melding writing, poiesis as the hapax legomenon of the culture?” (No, that question mark is not an typo. It is in Drucker’s text and is as mysterious there as it is here. But then Drucker is not interested in clarity, or thought, or poetry, or art. She is interested in sounding smart at the faculty cocktail party.) “Conceptual writing,” she assures us, “is not the same as algorithmic processing.” What it is she doesn’t seem to know. This is because conceptual writing is a con, a long hit of laughing gas, a pseudo-intellectual’s wet dream. Taking it seriously is dimwitted, although it can, evidently, lead to tenure, where every day is “poetry” month.
just read my very first piece by Johanna Drucker …<br />this:<br /> http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/drucker/viscults.html<br /><br />thanks<br /><br />i just might have gone through this too-fast-life<br />never knowing her …. work…<br /><br />hell<br /><br />I'm yet trying to get through Fredman's <br /><br />CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE – Assemblage and the Erotic in Postwar
Another denizen of the dank cellars of "conceptual writing" blows a gasket over Drucker's obit for CW here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/the-morbidity-of-conceptual-literature/<br /><br />He thinks it's alive and well. I attribute this to too many zombie movies as a child….
"fro" was automatically changed to "GROW"<br />by this damn computer !
ever hear of<br /><br />"electrons runnin' 'round your brain" ?<br />or<br /><br />"we are the Joy Boys of radio<br /> we chase electrons to and grow"<br /><br />we used to call those monster 1401 & 7070 computer storage units "brains"<br /><br />whether "conceptual" or "algorithmic" electrons/energy flowing through any medium<br
Some years back at the Walker Art Center here in Minneapolis, there was a retrospective exhibit of Yoko Ono's conceptual art experiments. One of the items I remember from the exhibit was a wooden board with several nails driven through it; a small sign by the piece said that the original exhibit years before also included a small box containing several other nails, a hammer, and a sign
This comment has been removed by the author.