Nada Gordon on Flarf and 'generation'

"Let's discuss this, shall we? Or rather, deconstruct it. Firstly, Flarf is not (in the robotic sense of the term) "generated." Flarf poems are written. Their materials are, in Kasey's term, sought. I almost prefer the word rescued. Some poems may be "generated," like that wonderful "Random Poem Generator" that was hanging around the internet for a while, but Flarf poems are very much willed and constructed.

In a larger sense of the term, I suppose you could say this poem was generated if that is how you think of the mechanism of creation: I do often think of poems as almost biological extrusions, like skin tags or fibroids or, as I posted recently on facebook, reflux."

Read the whole post. It's very good. Especially the thing about "valor sets".

Though I would have to argue that a "generated poem", be it aleotory work like that of Mac Low, or a found text, or even the product of the "Random Poem Generator" Nada mentions, is still "Willed and Constructed", though in various different ways. Cages Mesostics allow for the insertion of intentionally chosen "Wing Words", and Mac Low would carefully recraft the proccesses he used if the initial product did not turn out as he wanted. The craft, the will and the construction are simply removed a level from the text.

In the case of generators and the like (i use various online text-alteration programs in my own work - the two pieces in Brief and the sequence in Otoliths utilised these - these could be thought of as collaborations of a sort; and even on the most basic level there is will and construction inherent in the act of pressing a button, and in recognising what comes out as a poem.