Do you have an issue?
Issue 1 is funny. It’s also pretty smart. Most people seem to agree that the book was written by an algorithm, which seems likely, particularly in light of it’s massiveness. The algorithm is smart, the people that made the algorithm are smart, but it’s also smart conceptual poetry. Perhaps you might call it juvenile, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that, but in that case it’s juvenility to be praised, much like certain artists would praise their inner child. It’s juvenile like Duchamp is juvenile, like Dada is juvenile, like Flarf, like alot of conceptual poetry, like most literary hoaxes (and quite simply, most hoaxes). It doesn’t seem to aim at pissing off – the poetry is not intentionally unflattering, there is nothing about the book that is directly derogatory – but it doesn’t care either if you get pissed off, and it’s deliberately treading through violent territory (poets aren’t just overly emotional in caricatures, they’re the same in real life, although it’s not as romantic – usually it’s either funny or pathetic, and sometimes it’s just). The researchers behind the book must’ve had a notion that people’d get pissed off, irked or upset in some way, but they couldn’t be sure without doing the research.
The hypothesis might be: Poets get upset if they suspect someone might be making fun of them. Noone knows how the poems were generated, how the names were collected, and the anthology does not have a proposed agenda – the researchers have not said anything about the aim of the book. It’s certainly not “all poets are alike”, since one would hardly propose that Gunnar Ekelöf and Kenny Goldsmith, Gary Barwin and Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan and Darren Wershler-Henry, William Shakespeare, Jack Kerouac and Ron Silliman were all alike. Or, it wouldn’t make any sense, and I’m sort of guessing there’s some sense in it. As is, we know it’s a hoax. We don’t know whom they’re making fun of, and we don’t like it.
All sorts of statements have been made about the authors – they’re juvenile, stupid, young (I’ve never seen anyone report actually how old these people are, and I’m not sure I’d trust them if they did, not even if the hoaxters themselves would do it), students of Kenny G (both literally and figuratively, as if either were a crime), they’re flarfists or flarf-inspired – many people seem to literally think it’s Kenny himself under a pseudonym (which somehow sounds ridiculous) – they’re bored and can’t find anything better to do (name me a poet who isn’t?), they’re scoundrels, thieves (and yes, they are identity-thieves, but hey, it’s not as if you’re not still you, is it?), trying to profit of other people’s reputations (in a non-profit business, and I don’t think anybody’s ever going to be fooled and think this is a proper anthology, and if that ever happens it’ll probably be someone who hasn’t a clue and isn’t interested in having one), trying to ruin other people’s reputations (“My, my, I saw an awful poem by Ron Silliman the other day in a 4 thousand page anthology, I’ve lost all respect for the man and his poetry, I’m burning my Alphabet and never buying a book by him again”) etc. etc. etc.
It’s seems banal to say it, cliche-ic, because there’s something fundamentally true and repeated about it, but a great majority of the poetry community (more or less worldwide, as far as I can tell) could do with not always taking themselves so seriously. There’s a lot of spite, and there’s a lot of paranoia – which came first I don’t know. Reading is important, people should learn to, and they should learn to enjoy it – learn to enjoy encountering weird new things, or weird old things, or just new things or old things. (If I could, I might be tempted to get pissed of at every poet who ever wrote a book of boring old international vers libre, but I won’t ’cause it’s not gonna get any of us anywhere).
As most literary hoaxes Issue 1′s poetry is not least in it’s social reverberation – how do the hoaxees react to the hoaxers. Suffice to say it’s stirred the emotional pots of many poets, both people that were included and people not included, although it should be mentioned that quite many seem to like the game – included and not-included people – and why wouldn’t they? Anyway, most people, if not all, seem to have a reaction, which is more than you can say about a great many poetry books, and the reaction is almost always strong – laughter, anger or posed and poised nonchalance.