The New Flarf

In The New Poetics, Mathew Timmons's artistic control is far more evident than it was in his previous conceptual output, Credit (2009), and perhaps in consequence the poems are more engrossing, more personal, and, yes, more creative. Whereas Timmons composed Credit entirely from notices of overdue accounts sent to him by Chevron, Visa, etc., The New Poetics is sewn together by flarf—a mangled but still somehow smooth mixture of words comprised from Internet search engines. When it comes to conceptual poetry, the popular notion is that readers should take a hint from the word "conceptual" and stick to lauding the author's methods used before the writing stage even began. Looking for the poem's "deeper meaning" should be avoided as much as possible.

Credit reveled in this comparatively dry approach, the author copying and pasting the details of his financial downfall in a nightmarish, unending stream, every word taken from the coldly dry come-ons and, later, threats sent from credit card companies. The mechanical words, assembled haphazardly but still chronologically, packed a wallop only in the sense that behind the scenes we could picture Timmons ravenously taking revenge on those very companies by displaying their bile for all to see. But the words themselves were theirs; other than the obvious misspellings and run-together words, the control was entirely in the company's hands, not his.

Flarf allows Timmons more creative license in The New Poetics. Is flarf easy, too easy? Judging from how intricately each piece is put together here, no. The words may sprout from online sources, but the order and structure belong to Timmons. It could be argued that plagiarists work harder than those writing from scratch, since it takes a special brand of pompous ingenuity to modulate writings by multiple authors to imitate one fluid voice. Is modern art too obsessed with its modernity? Is contemporary literature too fixated on revealing the Internet's artificiality, a façade promising the most extensive information library in the world but with a Faustian catch—with these riches come questionable content, free of any depth? If these are the themes righteous artists feel compelled to trumpet nowadays, maybe conceptual poetry and flarf are the best mediums to capture this preoccupation. And that is basically all Timmons does, piecing together a parodistic jungle of pseudo-intellectualisms and sound bites illustrating the shifting definitions of what constitutes the New in this post-'net society. Transition is the key thread tying his flarf together. Nothing is ever settled, and all that is hep and happenin' is already morphing into the next new, or The New Next. Everything is passé, including (or especially) what's hip. We are experiencing "the past of modernity."

That's not to say Timmons flirts incessantly with Bob Dylan territory of "Look out, Kid" Subterranean Homesick Poetry. If so, he would start to read like tired slogans. And although admittedly he does come close to that at times (such as "The New Concept"'s in-your-face anti-industrial spin and the most blatantly flarfy "The New Night"), generally Timmons achieves something truly remarkable: subtlety from the Internet. The wonderfully perverse "The New Kitten" rips apart our endless delight in such animal-themed crazes as LOLcats, revealing what's really at the bottom of such kitschy fads: modern pet-owners displacing their maternal and paternal affections onto creatures pretty much incapable of returning human affection. We are growing increasingly incapable of coping with personal relations, finding in the wide, blank eyes of a numb, newborn critter a comforting substitute. The poem is a mash-up of random instructions gleaned from online cat experts, providing disturbingly cozy tips on how to warm the kitten up to its new environment, and vice-versa.

Remember that people (especially men) who are used to having dogs (not cats) may tend to play a little aggressively with The New Kitten. The best thing to do is to ignore the ruckus, and leave them to work it out on their...