Reading around the world, in photos.

The world’s longest literary remix contest.

Authors talk about their reading habits, via.

Walt Whitman, blogger.

Flarf film, via.

A video of a 5-year-old Flannery O’Connor with her chickens, via.

Should actors perform poetry instead of the poets?

Aaaand just for kicks, here’s a video of William Burroughs shooting William Shakespeare. Yeah, you read that right. Read more »

If you’re tired of all those ‘top books of the decade/2009′ articles: here are the top books of 1709.

Applying quantitative analysis to classic literature.

Some reactions to Electric Literature’s Twitter serialization of Rick Moody’s “Some Contemporary Characters,” as compiled by HTMLGIANT.

Speaking of serialized novels, author Nicholas Rombes is doing one of his own, via snail mail.

The Guardian wants you to know that dragons, not vampires, are the best monsters of all time.

Are e-readers the eight-tracks of publishing?

Aaand something to help get you through the rest of the week: a flarf orchestra. (via HTMLGIANT) Read more »

I have a special fondness in my heart for bad poetry. Partly because I’m a terrible poet myself so I can’t help but identify with fellow terrible poets. And also partly because, as I’ve discussed before, I think there’s a lot to be gained by disregarding the rules of “good” writing–how else are you supposed to further your craft if you’re not willing to take risks?

So in the spirit of taking risks, and of totally missing the mark, there’s Very Bad Poetry, an online journal featuring such gems as these: Read more »

The Expressive Intelligence Studio blog has a new post up about the roleplaying card game Magic: The Gathering, which made me feel nostalgic in an odd sort of way. Because while I did enjoy the game in its heyday, I had a very different experience with it because I never actually bothered to learn the rules of the game. I was inspired by the art on the cards and bored by the scoring system, and so instead came up with a new set of rules entirely (which I don’t remember at all now). I taught them to my friends and we played informal tournaments with each other at home, at school, wherever.

Like pretty much everyone ever, I have a certain fascination with my childhood, largely in part because I had no qualms whatsoever about turning up my nose at the so-called rules and inventing my own. No matter how silly or irrational they may have seemed. And because of this fearlessness (or, if you like, naiveté), the artifacts of my childhood consist of horribly-drawn comics, short stories plagiarized from my favorite novels, and scripts for movies I planned to make, camera be damned. I even convinced some of my friends to participate in an original musical about gang warfare, which wasn’t a fraction as hilarious to me then as it is to me now. Sure, I might not have had the necessary knowledge to write about such a subject, being a preteen girl from the suburbs of New Jersey. Sure, I might not have been the best candidate to compose the original score, not being able to actually play any musical instruments. But who cared? I was going to write as much of the musical as I could, and rehearse with my friends as much as I could, and have a blast doing it.

While I am thrilled beyond compare that I can (fairly) confidently say that I’m a better writer now than I was at 10 or 12, and that my ideas now actually come to fruition, I feel like there’s something I’ve lost. Read more »

Because lines like “unicorn believers don’t declare fatwas” and “King Hussein and President Fabio, always just about to touch each other on their devolved sparkle-offs and Neil Patrick Harris appreciation pages” oddly inspire me, and because it’s Monday, I can’t think of a better way to start the week than some flarf, with some shitty illustrations drawn by me. “A” for effort?

Flarf, by the way, is not a silly word I made up (though I wish it was). It’s a controversial new avant-garde poetry movement, and I say “controversial” for two reasons: first, flarf is inspired by results from Google searches, like “grandmother’s explosive diarrhea” or “annoying diabetic bitch.” And second, because flarf started as a joke. Poet Gary Sullivan was intrigued by vanity presses, which were notorious for unfailingly praising your “exemplary” work and then accepting your poetry (and more importantly, your money) for publication. Sullivan wanted to see if they would still accept a poem that was really bad. Mind-numbingly, shockingly, irrefutably bad. So Sullivan wrote one. To get an idea of how godawful it was, here are the opening lines:

Yeah, mm-hmm, it’s true
big birds make
big doo! I got fire inside
my “huppa”-chimp(TM)
gonna be agreessive, greasy aw yeah god
wanna DOOT! DOOT!
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!
oooh yeah baby gonna shake & bake then take
AWWWWWL your monee, honee (tee hee)
uggah duggah buggah biggah buggah muggah

The poem was accepted. Sullivan subsequently dubbed his new style of poetry “flarf,” sent it to all his friends, and a movement was born. And like all movements, it evolved from something really bad into something subversive and actually quite good. Good, that is, as long as you’re not looking for pretty lines and stanzas that seem to be plucked from the very heavens. Because pretty, flarf ain’t. It’s wacky, and weird, and kinda funny-looking. But then again, that’s why I like it so much. It’s a refreshing break in an industry cluttered poems that are overly complex or sentimental. And like all avant-garde, I think it’s healthy to push at the boundaries of what you think is “poetry,” or “writing,” or “storytelling.” Even if your work is (relatively) conventional, pushing at the boundaries helps you to better understand what’s inside them.

So without further ado, here’s some flarf. With illustrations. Read more »