Pretentious Art-School Analysis of the "Internet" School of Poetry

In an interview with Tao Lin on Tao's blog, Mazie Louise Montgomery said:

"I had this notion that there would end up being some "Internet" school of poetry, though not called that. I don't know what I thought it would be called. Maybe we should get together and decide what that is going to be called before its too late. I don't think that's too ballsy. I really don't."

This is what I can see as what brings the writers in the "Internet" school together (and I don't want to sound like an arsehole pretentious English student here, but won't be able to help it):

- a belief that all abstract words and concepts are basically meaningless

- a belief that all poetry must be completely personal and connected to the author, and must express things that are "embarrassing", or reveal vulnerabilities about the poet

- a tendency towards simple, easily-accessible language

- a tendency to question anything that is "self-evidently true"

- using nonsense and humour to destroy the seriousness of what is being explored

The problem is that, by trying to define the "Internet" school, a person would have to put limits on what is possible, would destroy the inclusivity of the "movement", and also destroy (through analysis) the fun and "aliveness" of what exists.

But here is what I also think: something exists, something that is very different to any other fiction and poetry I have ever read before. So I think that I agree with Mazie that it probably isn't too ballsy to try to come up with a name or something, because then more people will pay attention and what does exist will gain more publicity, which means more hits on blogs, and ultimately more books read (if that stage is ever reached).

Alive for Five Seconds

Paul looks around the diner and rubs his fingers against his lips.

Samantha looks down at the table and rubs her hands together and then messes with her hair.

Paul lights a cigarette and blows smoke into his hands.

“Who are we?” says Paul.

“You are Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless,” Samantha says, “And I am some girl with short hair.”

“You are Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” says Paul. “Actually, no.”

“I am Anna Karina in Une Femme Est Une Femme,” says Samantha.

“You’re right,” says Paul. “Haha. Haha?”

“Haha.”

 

Paul asks Samantha what she has been doing for the past three weeks. He has not seen her in three weeks. Samantha rubs her hands together and looks down at the diner table.

“Reading and drinking coffee. Reading and drinking coffee. Reading and smoking cigarettes. Trying to work out things and then destroying things in my head and feeling funny.”

 

A waiter walks over and stands by the table.

Paul says loudly, “I want to fuck over this establishment and crush capitalist society.”

Samantha says, “That sounds like fun, like in that movie which I have forgotten the name of.”

The waiter says, “Would you like any coffee or tea?”

Paul says, “We want neither.”

The waiter leaves and Paul takes two flasks of coffee from his satchel and unscrews the lids and gives one flask to Samantha and Samantha and Paul both drink coffee from the flasks that Paul has brought with him from his home.

“We are crushing capitalist society,” says Samantha. “This café is not profiting from our desires.”

 

“I am always pretending,” says Paul. “I am always lying.”

“Me too. We are much too self-conscious,” says Samantha.

“No,” says Paul, “You are just saying a cliché. People always say, ‘Don’t be so self-conscious’ all the time. Self-consciousness being ‘bad’ is a cliché. If the only reason that you do not want to be so self-conscious is because another person has told you that being self-conscious is ‘bad’, then you are living in ‘bad faith.’ If we want to live for ourselves, then we need to be more self-conscious. That would be more novel and more fun.”

“Okay,” says Samantha. “Let’s do it.”

 

Two people walk away from a table nearby and leave their coffee mugs on the table. Samantha walks over to the other table and picks up a mug and then drops it on the ground and the mug smashes and then she picks up the other mug and drops it on the ground and the other mug smashes.

“That was exciting,” says Samantha.

“I haven’t seen that in any movie ever before,” says Paul.

“For about five seconds I felt alive,” says Samantha. "I was exciting in complete novelty."

“For about five seconds you weren’t a cliché,” says Paul. “I feel as though mindless property damage is a good way to feel alive momentarily. We have to make sure that this doesn't become popular, because then it will become a cliché. We have to make sure that nobody from MTV finds out about this.”

“Self-conscious mindless property damage is foundational for my newly-developed philosophy of life,” says Samantha.

interview with ben latini

Ben Latini writes on the blog which is called Big Hairy Word Monsters. Here is an interview I had with him. He interviewed me first, so now we are even. Somewhere in the interview, Ben talks about keeping a special place in his heart's bookshelf for Charles Bukowski.

Me: You were doing this thing on your blog a while ago which was  mashups. You cut-and-pasted sentences from novels, and your own  stories, and put them in a random order. What were you trying to work   out in your head by doing mashups?

 

 

Ben: It really wasn't "random order".  I tried to use material that already existed as a source from which to draw for experimentation.  I wanted to mess around with odd juxtapositions and focus on the sounds off the words...aural texture...the way words bounce off of each other.  I'm sort of fascinated by the fact that text is so easy to manipulate.  I take someone's story, and in my hands...it becomes a whole new thing. You can't do this sort of thing in the same way with other art forms.  I could try to incorporate someone else's footage into a film I make, but it won't mesh exactly.  I don't have the same lighting setup, the sound may be a bit different.  But in writing, we all start with the same words and letters (assuming we're talking English speakers of course).  Your work can integrate into mine seamlessly if I work to make it do so.  I don't need a budget...I don't need to hire actors.  There's a whole world at my fingertips and I can instantly make anything happen in this word-universe.  And what's amazing...is that when I did these mashups...the core of the material I drew from was still there.  I could still feel the essence of the subject pulsing through the words.  Mostly, though, I was just excited to have come across a new way to come up with material for my writing.  I'll never have writer's block.  Because, if I want to write, I'll just do it...ideas are floating in the air.  Everything is an idea for a story...so, you just try a whole bunch of them out and see what works.

 

 

Me: There is also a blog post where you said that your aspiration, as  an English major, is to, "Probably become a homeless guy". Could you  type a few sentences about your thoughts related to the difficulties  involved in trying to make money from creative writing?

 

 

Ben: I think it's silly to hope to make a living at creative writing.  A beautiful idea...but a silly one. The window of opportunity gets smaller everyday.  I think it's actually presumptuous and wrong to want much money for your writing.  Now with the internet...there's so much content that is free, it doesn't make sense to think you'll be able to keep charging people for it.  I think honestly that all literature should be free.  Writers should have regular jobs and not be sitting in a room cloistered from everyone else's experience.  In order to make literature a thriving community with millions of participants and a consistent level of excitement about the writing coming out...I think we need to make it all availible and free.  Everyone can watch the same shit on tv...but they can't always get ahold of the same books.  I don't want writing to be someone's job...I want it to be something that bursts out of someone out of someone and can't be contained...something so forceful it seeks every outlet that it can insert itself into.  I want literature to be a big deal like it was in the days of yore.  Plus...if we didn't have the money or prestige of the big publishers to tempt us...everyone could write whatever they wanted and they wouldn't hold back on sharing it with us.  I used to think I wanted to be published by a "big-time" press someday, because I'd be validated and be able to comfortably call myself a writer.  But now I don't think you should wait for someone else to tell you you're a writer.  Just write and try not to think about the extraneous industry stuff which only gets in the way.

 

 

Me: Let's say that you have your own religion (which you might  already, I don't know). What are the central pillars of Latinianity?

 

 

Ben: My philosophy is that life is just the process of keeping busy and amusing ourselves until we die.  So we don't need to take it as seriously as most people seem to, and we don't shouldn't it matters whether or not we live some certain way.  This isn't a negative existentialist bent though.  I actually see this as a positive.  It feels to me like freedom.  I assume there's no God or heaven, because I don't want to owe anyone.  I believe in humanity...that people, overall, are good, or at least interesting.  Death is very scary to me, but then again, so is life (I have anxiety issues).

 

 

Me: Type a list of your favorite poets at the moment and why you like them.

 

 

Ben: I actually read most poetry with ambivilance.  I study it, and find it stimulating...but I often don't value one poem over the next.  Poetry is too abstract for me to feel like I have any criteria to make value judgements.  Once in a while, a particular poem will strike me somehow... but I can't say I consistently like many poets.  However...there's room in a special place in my heart's bookshelf (can't believe I just said that) for:

 

• Charles Bukowski because he writes from in front of the curtain...I look at the page and I can see exactly what he's doing.  I can see the poem, smell it and roll around in its mud.  Plus, he's funny without seeming like he's trying hard to be funny.  It puts me inside of a moment...where as most poems make me feel like I'm looking at some dissected and fractured pieces of a moment through a layer of glass.

• Mike Young, because his imagery is interesting...his poems are dense...he blends the most bizarre and mudane moments of life and tosses them to us in off-speed chunks...they're hard to get a hold of...but in a good way.  I feel like...he knows what he's talking about...has such a mastery over his subjects that he can present it in a jumbled fashion and I'll still feel the heart of the piece as though I know exactly what he means.  And he writes these great prose poems, which he calls prose flurries...neither too prosey nor too poemic.

 

• Ellen Kennedy, for being funny and unnerving.  When I first read her...I liked the way she wrote in complete sentences, but wrote things that were surreal, so that she could escape the mundane and still have a dose of some brand of poesy in her work.  She was the first of the so-called "Wal-Mart Realists" that I read, before I realized that basically everyone on the interent writes like that.  Still I find her more amusing and interesting than most all of the others who write in that style.  I only wish she'd write more.

 

Me: Are you happy that blogs and the internet exist, both in the context of promoting your writing, and also in a wider social context? You can type about either.

 

Ben: I am very glad blogs exist.  I can easily find interesting people to correspond with (not always easy to do with the limited selection presented to us in "real life")  And I love the internet...because it can keep me company in so many ways, while allowing me to avoid too much real social contact which I'm not always comfortable with or interested in.

As for a wider social context...I try not to think too much about society as a whole, because I don't feel I'm responsible for what other people do.  I'd rather not think ill of the direction society has chosen to take, because, frankly I'm not dynamic enough to effect change.  I just try to accept the idea that everything will work out.  If it doesn't...we'll just change our definition of "things working out"...no problem!  But yeah, There isn't much of an audience for creative writing in my hometown.  I'm glad I can make my writing internationally available.  Not because I think my own writing is so important, but just because I want to be read.  I almost feel like I'll know when I've received what, to me, is an adequate amount of recognition, and then, I could stop writing and go live in a cave.  that's not to say that I'm only writing for recognition, but it is to say I feel like I may stop at any time.  It's like when you're throwing up, and afterward, you feel better...I think there's something I'm working toward with all this thinking and typing and submitting and posting and eventually, I may just hit the nail on the head, and I'll have something I can point to and say, "that's what I'm all about."  "that's my point."  Then I'll be able to walk around feeling light.

!!!!

Not all art is rooted in despair! Not all art is rooted in boredom! Don’t cheat yourself! Drink three cups of green tea - recklessly!

Don't amount to anything! Don't 'develop your character'! Don't self-help! Exist and keep existing!

Jump in the air anytime! Smoke a cigarette! Drink black coffee! Read some silly subtext! Read foreign film!

You don’t have to be anyplace! You don’t have to be anytime! Play the xylophone or the piano accordion!