Kenneth Goldsmith Responds

The Flarf and Conceptual Writing portfolio was not meant as a survey of the whole field of digital poetry. Rather, it focused on two specific groups who ask what it means to be a poet in the Internet age. Certainly many others are asking the same question and hopefully coming up with equally provocative and challenging responses.

In regard to Mary Anne Sullivan’s accusation that these “fads” are “tired and old,” we say: if it all sounds familiar, it is. Conceptual Writing and Flarf obstinately make no claims on originality. On the contrary, we employ intentionally self- and ego-effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as our precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as our methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as our ethos. If we appear to you as fads, then we feel we’ve succeeded beyond our wildest expectations: we’ll be yesterday’s news by the time you read this.