It was once the case that many educated Americans and Englishmen (and women) learned their favorite poems by heart and drew great solace or inspiration from them at appropriate times. Now, I would guess, that I know no one who actively reads poetry at all. It is a literary genre that, like Marxism, exists only in small corners of academia.
But things are not quiet in those corners as this story of tenure lost due to dueling schools of poetry at Dickinson College. Wasn't that the women's college in Animal House where our heros obtained dates?
Happily, this story leads to the web page for this conference, at which the following presentation will occur:
"Jasper Bernes's essay "On the Poverty of Internet Life: A Call for Poets" (Action, Yes) argues for an understanding of internet culture in terms of the logic of capitalist accumulation and the ideological imperatives of the U.S. ruling class after 9/11. It closes with a call for poets to realize the emancipatory promise of the internet in a space and manner less susceptible to regulation and subsumption. His talk will focus on his plans for such a project, responses to the essay and the subsequent development of his thinking."
Sadly, I have plans that weekend.
Background on flarf here courtesy of wikipedia and more flarfish fun here. Sounds like (very) good fun to me, but then I spent my junior high English courses writing poetry in the style of e. e. cummings rather than learning English grammer. I have no beef with e. e. cummings but knowing how to diagram sentences would have helped in my compiler course a few years later at university.
It is a good day that begins by discovering a new literary movement completely by accident.
Hat tip: bookslut
Who was my favorite student this term?
7 years ago
