3,785 Page Pirated Poetry Anthology

My name is there - along with a poem that I didn't even write! I have no idea what kind of farce this is, but I'm glad someone is calling attention to this because it's downright unlawful.

Hoax. The poems, if they are poems, are not by the poets ascribed to them.

What I find interesting is not the idea that my work has been appropriated sans permission or profit. Hell, I'm a poet. Wouldn't be the first time. What I find interesting is that my name has been attributed to a poem (or poem fragment) I did not write, as if to suggest that my name has some independent content value. From what I can tell, scanning throughout the manuscript, this had been done throughout. A name has been placed below as poem as if he or she were the author--but mere juxtaposition does not authorship make.
Just for the record.
Cheers,
Sandra Beasley
Washington, DC

Howard Stern does shock value much more poetically.
Yay, I'm not in it! Gonna go write a poem now, thanks.

i think this is funny and i approve of it

This is outrageous. These guys stole over 3,000 of my poems and are passing them off as poems by Rachel Mallino, Sandra Beasley, etc. etc.
WTF??????
I deserve credit and compensation. I hope we can settle this out of court, but if I have to sue to make sure these poems appear under the name of their rightful author, Matt Cozart, I'll do it.

Yeah I was listed and they didn't ask permission nor did they use a poem I wrote but attributed it to me heard another poet complain about the same thing

1) As many as are here, there are some I know of who are not
2) One name appears to be listed three times
3) At least six are listed twice, and maybe more than twelve
4) I wonder which first name appears most often
5) This is amazing nonetheless
6) Most of those listed are new to me, which may tell more
    about me then about the list, but I suspect there may be
   : 15000 or more out there
7) If coming issues are more of the same, we might find out,
    even though those issues too/ include poets who have
    passed
8) Can't speak for others, but thank you to the editors
9) Of course there's a lingering suspicion that this is
    another of Mr. Goldsmith's uncreative writing objects
a ruse ia a ruse ia a ruse

I said to Nico, who was coming out of the basement: "Did you hear about this 'Issue 1'? You're in it." He said he had, from Harriet, and a number of other e-mail sources. And we sat, and we read it. And if no one else will say it -- I will say it: I'm finally impressed. Not only with the smashing delivery, but all 3,000 poems. They're clearly written by the same person. And I don't believe that it's a computer. Or I'd like to believe it's not. Even if it is, it's rather nice. The repetition, the phrasings. Is it commentary? Possibly. Commentary on the avant-garde? Certainly. But finally, after reading blog after blog and journal after journal, and being involved in academia, and being almost sickened by the ability of smart people to crank out so many unimpressive poems under the subjective lovely umbrella of the "avant garde," -- my eyes are a little open. I'm thinking a little. And this is one journal that I'm not immediately throwing across the room, watching the same tired names repeat the same tired tricks. My most favorite contemporary poets -- Doug Powell, Sarah Manguso, Matthea Harvey, Joshua Beckman, Tessa Rumsey, Oleana Davis, Harry Mathews are beautifully missing -- though to be fair, both Ben Lerner and Nathaniel Mackey -- also faves -- are on the list. Does it say something about exposure, over exposure, over producing of poems? I'm thinking, I"m thinking. And I'm glad to be.

Same here! My name is listed under a poem I did not write about dragons...

In my case, I really don't care, as the poem said to be included in MP3 version (accessible as such in the archives of an online journal) can't possibly be in the PDF. I mean, those loathsome PDFs don't accomodate audio files, as far as I know; certainly, I couldn't find my Playpoem. So it's really a farce, this whatever it is. Everything else these days is a farce, so why not an "issue" anthology of ... how many poets is it? I did glimpse a few poems and they were excellent. So really, I'm proud not to be in the anthology in which I'm included.

Yep, I did not write the one they credited to me as well.
Kaz

I like this. I think I like my poem but I will have to take another look tomorrow. good idea.

Bizarre! My name is on there, but I don't write poetry. Where did he get my name, and where did he get the poem that my name is signed to?

Uuuhhhhhhhh. Ddddduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ddddddddddddduuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Uuuuuuuuhhhhh, Uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,
Dddddduuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh uhhhhhhh dddduuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh.
Check how I blog. This shit is real.
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ddddddduuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ddddddddduuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uuuhhhhhhhh,
Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh ddduuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
If you don't like this you live in a black-and-white movie.
Slllllluuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Duuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
What real things are really like.
Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uuuuhhhhhhh. Duuuuhhhhhhh.
Ddddddduuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I coulda been a contendah
I coulda been pirated
Instead of the left out which I am
(Thank goodness)
Cheers
Zvi A. Sesling
Brookline, MA

Saving freight
Their slow freight
At a delivered syllable
Lofty as a weight
Saving
Anny Ballardini
I did not write this.

This term -- "poetry community" -- that's an invention for the purposes of this exercise as well, yes?

Sorry, Kenny G., but this is nothing to
get pissed off about. You & the others
have really pleased me. I love ithe project,
& everyone should!
The protective, snivelling responses seen here are
especially wonderful, as if poets owned
their (or any) words, or names. These folks should
be glad that the editors remembered them at all!
Isn't it an honor to be included?
I'm guessing that Jim Carpenter's "Erika" or some such
program "wrote" most of the poems, since so many of
them reflect the telltale signs of generated works. If anything,
the poems are pirated from that (or whatever) source.
That words such as "scope" appear so frequently is a
sure tip-off to that modality.
Anyway, an enjoyable adventure. Dig the gigantic
magazine! C Funk

This is, of course SHEER GENIUS, and not just because I'm listed first.
The solemn indignation of the three commentators before me here is HILARIOUS.

Sandra wrote: "...my name has been attributed to a poem (or poem fragment) I did not write.."
I didn't write the lines attributed to me either.

This is, of course, absolutely hilarious, and a telling expose of us poets who have our google alerts set to our names, thus dragged into the dragnet of this performance of frustrated narcissism. The joke's on us!

Could you please add that, not only are these unpermissioned and unauthorized, they are not even authored by the "poets" themselves.

Interesting. Each poem seems to center on "like" or "as," as though each poem were trying to capture the poet in a simile. I wouldn't call it a hoax, exactly -- it's free and obviously not composed of stolen poems. More like an immediately apparent performance trick.
David Kellogg
Boston, MA

Here is the comment I posted on my blog, "Sonnets at 4 A.M.":
I received a Google Alert for my name today (October 3, 2008) and found that one of "my" poems was included in an online anthology titled (as nearly as I can tell), ForGodot: Research in Poetry--Issue 1, a 3,785 page pdf document "edited" (or rather, "researched") by three people I don't know named Vladimir Zykov, Steve McLaughlin, and Gregory Laynor.
Here is the poem which is attributed to me on page 3,498 of this document:
Bonnie Winds and Fair Twists
Adored
Like a bird
Like a bonnie wind
To depart left and permission
To perceive velvet and hubbub
To leave forgiving for a right
To leave a privilege of bushes
To stir growing scope
Greg Rappleye
I don't mind someone posting one of my actual poems on their blog or website--as long as it is attributed to me--in fact, I am generally honored to see that someone cares enough about my work to make such an effort and, perhaps, say a kind word.
However, I do object to having my name associated with a steaming turd like "Bonnie Winds and Fair Twists."
For the record: I did not write this poem, did not authorize the use of my name in association with this poem, and I have never heard of these people or their bizarre project. Could I lift a 3,785 page "online anthology," I would drop it on their heads.

Here is the comment I posted on my blog, "Sonnets at 4 A.M.":
I received a Google Alert for my name today (October 3, 2008) and found that one of "my" poems was included in an online anthology titled (as nearly as I can tell), ForGodot: Research in Poetry--Issue 1, a 3,785 page pdf document "edited" (or rather, "researched") by three people I don't know named Vladimir Zykov, Steve McLaughlin, and Gregory Laynor.
Here is the poem which is attributed to me on page 3,498 of this document:
Bonnie Winds and Fair Twists
Adored
Like a bird
Like a bonnie wind
To depart left and permission
To perceive velvet and hubbub
To leave forgiving for a right
To leave a privilege of bushes
To stir growing scope
Greg Rappleye
I don't mind someone posting one of my actual poems on their blog or website--as long as it is attributed to me--in fact, I am generally honored to see that someone cares enough about my work to make such an effort and, perhaps, say a kind word.
However, I do object to having my name associated with a steaming turd like "Bonnie Winds and Fair Twists."
For the record: I did not write this poem, did not authorize the use of my name in association with this poem, and I have never heard of these people or their bizarre project. Could I lift a 3,785 page "online anthology," I would drop it on their heads.

I'm honored to be included. Yay, Google Alert (TM)! But I wish they'd done a better job - as it is, the thing is just a sincere form of flattery.

If this is "sheer genius," than the project does succeed in proving what humorless dopes poets are. Making that point isn't much of an accomplishment, though I'm sure the outpouring above will make those guys feel smug.

I thought this was quite clever. It certainly sounds like the same poet throughout. The poem attributed to me as not bad, actually. All in all, I think this stunt is almost as funny as the Futility Review (www.futilityreview.com).

It's been suggested on another list that the names are those members of blogger.com who have the tag "poetry" associated with them.
When you add to this that the texts are generated, you have (a) something that doesn't need that much effort to produce, since the names were "selected" by a bot trawl, and (b) an anthology that not even the "editors" would have read.
There are some people that not even their mother could love.
Now that it's been done, let's hope that we're spared a repetition of the event.
Robin

This is a boring anthology.
The 'poem' that appears above my name has nothing to do with me. Not my poem. Not my style, not my vocabulary, not my preoccupations, not my language. What's the point here?
The people who compile it give no email address for contacting them. If they were doing a bold experiment, they'd want to be involved in the discussion that ensued.
Annoying, but not interesting.
Chris Mansell

haven't seen it yet but
i hope it has some new poems by Araki Yasusada in it . . .

What's most amusing is that Mr. Goldsmith was apparently unfamiliar enough with the work of the thousands of poets in the anthology or whatever that he doesn't see fit to point out that the poems aren't even by the authors listed. Or perhaps he wanted people to figure this out for themselves. In a certain respect, then, I think the "authors" of this have made one of many points. It's good to know people will still hold onto both ends of the Dada rope...
If I were the one making this I would have left out Dana Gioia to make a political and/or aesthetic point. The people doing this dropped the ball on that one.
If this thing burns your britches you need some new hobbies.

This is so funny and kind of cool as well. Love the comments.

Yay, one less poem I have to write more my next book. Keep 'em coming typewriter monkeys!

Over coffee this morning, approving reader comments (and reading, in another tab, the news of OJ Simpson's trial), I mentioned the anthology to my wife. She has been teaching "The Waste Land" and showed me a line Cal Bedient wrote in his essay "He Do the Police in Different Voices," which speaks nicely to this anthology:

"Perhaps no poem in the language seems more self-aware than "The Waste Land," yet none seems nearly so other-conscious at the same time, so eager to wing off others' words to the one true sphere."

Of interest, somebody wrote these poems. As Crystal Curry notes, possibly a single author. And what a great way to attract an audience, this juke. Likely more people will read this "book" (at least a few poems) than would read most books that make their way into the world. I am happy to participate with a not-poem of my own. Will there be a reading tour? Perhaps the roughly 3,000 poets involved can caravan in buses across this fair land, stopping to read poems they didn't write to strangers who don't want to hear them. Maybe even encountering the stranger who did write them. Fistacuffs!

I can't believe these guys rejected the poems I didn't write! What do they mean by "work not yours does not meet our current needs" anyway? And where do they get off telling me they'd be interested in seeing more of what I don't write in the future?

Poetry as Panty Raid.

Well, unlike the ones published under my own name a few months ago in Flashpoint Magazine http://www.flashpointmag.com/2xkfp10.htm, I DID write the poem that is attributed to me here. How Goldsmith found it in a little print magazine published four years ago in Venezuela is beyond me. It must be online somewhere. But I'm flattered that he, or whoever might have, took the time to translate it.
Am I the only one who has a real poem in this?
By coincidence (if coincidence there is, in poetry), Kenny Goldsmith only recently blurbed my most recent book, Poetic Architecture: Eleven Quizzes for a Conceptual Poetry Symposium (BlazeVox, 2008). You can order the book through Amazon.
Here's the blurb (also quoted at Amazon), which Kenny kindly sent, perhaps as a joke, thinking, no doubt, that I wouldn't include it...
***
Am I writing this? Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. I'm a Conceptual Poet, after all... Let me just say that I have shared these "Quizzes" with a few of my fellow Conceptual poets (including Charles "Chuckles" Bernstein and Christian "The Bible" Bok), and we all agree they are silly sophomoric exercises--a fact hardly surprising, since Kent Johnson's resentment-filled forays over the past few years are consistently shallow, misinformed, and shrill. (And hey, Kent, by the way, speaking of ©, I see that you have ©'d the book! What's up with that , Mr. Pure? Care to explain??) In other words, and at the risk of sounding extreme, I strongly encourage readers to ignore this ridiculous piece of attention-seeking dilettantish drivel. Now, let's get on with the real work.
--Kenneth Goldsmith

Hey, I was just going to write that poem I didn't write. And they already published it. NOT fair.

Roland Barthes might be found chuckling in his grave this morning at all of the poet egos lamenting, laughing over, or wringing their hands about a kind of anthology that appeared on the web this morning (read the irate comments already piling up here). Happily, it appears on a blog called, “For Godot,” which is certainly a play on Beckett’s existential play, “Waiting for Godot.” We’ve waited long enough, and now we’ve decided to start making something “for Godot” since we’re still here, waiting. Might as well do something with all of this waiting, this huge internet, this number of poems in the world. This something fucks with the authority of authorship, assigning poems to published poets that they did not write. My poem, which is not a product of my brain, but is “my” poem now, like it or not, is called, “A broad man” (page 1663); it seems to have actually been written by someone, not computer-generated. On the other hand, poet, Ana Bozicevic, read “her” poem and suspects otherwise; she believes they are computer-generated.
One of the editors, in the comments section of his blog, gives a silly response to the poets writing in:
Gang,
This is quite an interesting coincidence! Apparently you all have the exact same names as the Ed Baker, Weldon Gardner Hunter and Ted Burke with whom we at the forgodot.com editorial team have been in close contact and collaboration.
I apologize on all of our behalf for this misunderstanding.
Vladimir Zykov
forgodot.com
No response would have been better, and yes, more clever than this answer. Let the act of the anthology work for awhile before inciting violence with your simplistic dismissals, I say.
For Godot (my name for the “anthology”) has been announced on numerous blogs this morning, likely because of the huge number of poets’ “work” included in the anthology: 3,164! That amounts to a whole lotta “Google alerts” arriving in folks’ email boxes this morning. Godot finally appears in the form of your displaced self, your immortalized writing, your electronic/electric words made permanent (or until there is no more elect-ricity) – and they’re not even yours! I have to admit, I’m happy to be “included” in this spectacle. That is, this massive joke, this huge undertaking, this attempt at … what?
The last verse of “my” poem, I admit: I dig it:
Handy as a road
Well-kept as a man
Glittering as a man
Eld as a pain
Men will glitter, are rarely well-kept, but can be handy as a road – all thoughts that have made their way into my brain and are running around now, as effects of the joke, the poem-that-is-not mine – exactly what a poem should do: incite to active thought, thought outside the realm of usual-thought. Is it a poem? Yes. Is it mine? Who cares? Did the joke make me read it? Yes. Would I have read it otherwise? In the sea of poems out there, likely not. So, success? Something of it.
I also have to wonder, did these three gentlemen – I don’t know who they are but have a feeling these are not pseudonyms – take their own unpublished manuscripts, put them together, and add poets’ names to each poem, thus producing a “book” that would finally be read by the poetry world? I hope this isn’t the case; I prefer a more romantic option: they’ve been reading the work of three thousand plus poets for the past few years, and they’ve written a poem in response to each poet, attaching the poet’s name to their specially-tailored odes.
Who knows? I guess we’ll have to wait to hear from the researchers themselves (or actually take the time to email them):
Stephen McLaughlin
* Age: 22
* Gender: Male
* Industry: Student
* Occupation: Media Design student, Piet Zwart Institute
* Location: Rotterdam : Netherlands
* [email protected]
Gregory Laynor
* [email protected]
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Zykov
* [email protected]
But somehow, the anthology, For Godot, should simply speak for itself and let Poetry World behave as it will. That’s something to listen out for!
Amy King

Ultimately, whose poems are these? Were they authored by these guys? If so, look how they've gotten published poets to read their work.
Being unknown allows one not to worry about who gets pissed off at a person. And now we're thinking and talking about their poems. Fairly clever -- times three thousand.
Amy

Class action suit anyone?

When is the launch?
ak

I didn't write the poem attributed to me (nor is it very good), but whatever is happening here is interesting, just like it was interesting when those fake Japanese poems appeared in the Antioch Review. I don't think anyone should lose any sleep over it, and I hope it's just the first step in a twenty-step performance art piece that culminates in something beautiful and moving (i.e., I hope it's a really well-thought-out hoax, rather than just a stunt hacked out in three days on a whim.)

Awesome.

Ah, Kenny is always Kenny.

This is brilliant. I actually read most of it, and it's one of the most compelling books I've read in some time. Kind of like reading poets horoscopes or. The poem attributed to me is right on in its parody/praise and its position in the cycle of the book...I'm thinking something I'd written was put through a few machine grinders then modeled. Here's my guess as to the hand behind it: Lester Oracle. A little bird tells me Lester has been working on a program to make more intuitive poetry generating programs--could this be it? Other times I sense the Yasusada hand too--I don't believe Brooks Johnson was ever a blogger (in resonse the the above poet-blogger theory)...and the praise and or disdain handed out in the poems attributed to his friends and enemies would indicate this. But maybe not, just a guess. Maybe just some new lone gunman..And there are the double entries for certain poets as if to indicate they have a double nature and function in "the community". But maybe its all an accident attached to names. Oh, anyway, this is actually interesting.

First guys, could you please make this correction to the poem attributed to me? I had asked for a revision on proofs, but apparently you did not make it. My poem should read:
O steaming turd
O steaming
turd
in a
punchbowl
How
lovely
thy
floateth
Second, I suppose this is some kind of "radical" situationist "detournement"? Oooooh, how radical! At best, a piss poor attempt. And as Slavoj Zizek. argues, (according to Wikipedia) "the kind of distance opened up by detournement is the condition of possibility for ideology to operate: by attacking and distancing oneself from the sign-systems of capital, the subject creates a fantasy of transgression that "covers up" his/her actual complicity with capitalism as an overarching system."
Third, a WHOIS query on the domain name where the PDF is stored (arsonism.org) brings up this registration info:
Domain ID:D104642706-LROR
Domain Name:ARSONISM.ORG
Created On:17-Jul-2004 00:26:37 UTC
Last Updated On:18-Jul-2008 05:04:34 UTC
Expiration Date:17-Jul-2010 00:26:37 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com, Inc. (R91-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:GODA-07356165
Registrant Name:Stephen McLaughlin
Registrant Street1:409 Ash St.
Registrant City:Delanco
Registrant State/Province:New Jersey
Registrant Postal Code:08075
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.8567641574
Registrant Email:[email protected]
Admin ID:GODA-27356165
Admin Name:Stephen McLaughlin
Admin Street1:409 Ash St.
Admin City:Delanco
Admin State/Province:New Jersey
Admin Postal Code:08075
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.8567641574
Admin Email:[email protected]
Tech ID:GODA-17356165
Tech Name:Stephen McLaughlin
Tech Street1:409 Ash St.
Tech City:Delanco
Tech State/Province:New Jersey
Tech Postal Code:08075
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.8567641574
Tech Email:[email protected]
Name Server:NS1.DREAMHOST.COM
Name Server:NS2.DREAMHOST.COM
Name Server:NS3.DREAMHOST.COM
If one wants to take action against the owner(s) of the site ARSONIST.ORG, they can do so by going through the registrar GoDaddy.com.
A WHOIS query on the domain FORGODOT.COM is privacy protected by PRIVACYPROTECT.ORG. If anyone wants to take legal action against the site's owner(s), they can complain to the registrar above (GoDaddy) and also, at PRIVACYPROTECT.ORG, there is a form one can fill out to report fraud, spam, or abuse by the site's owner(s) of FORGODOT.COM:
Request Domain Owner Contact Info
1. If any domain is engaged in spam, abuse or any illegal / unlawful activity you may report the same.
2. Please enclose evidence of spam or abuse or the activity in question.
3. Our abuse team will review the complaint and reveal the actual contact information of the owner where appropriate.
And last, if Forgodot.org is plan to sell this anthology, I would like to receive my 1/3164th of the enormous royalties that this lovely publication would certainly bring in. A poetry publication like this would surely be a gigantic best-seller!
Oooh, shiver me timbers! What new rad project will these culture jamming geniuses come up with next? I can hardly wait!

I wrote my poem & I'm very proud if it.

My name is Edward Champion, and I approve of this experiment. This is a fine litmus test separating the playful types from the dour and humorless ones.

shit sandwich. good job. everybody be more concerned with fetishizing your poetry in this clusterfuck of a crumbling empire. good job.

How revealing all around. On all sides of the aisle, stage, lobby, entrance, street, living rooms, bedrooms, courthouses... (Beginning to sound like old Walt.) A massive gag. I don't believe anyone is hurt but much opportunity has arisen. Meanwhile, someone's having a jolly laugh. Best to us all.

Well, at least the poem they ascribed to me isn't better than what I actually write - that would've been embarrassing. Although, if you do like it, by all means I wrote it! Secretly, I was hoping it would've been about dragons or pirates...preferably pirates
Cheers!
John

This seems to be little more than, or a close cousin of at least, the usual innocuous vamping on Duchampism, where the signatures associated with works become the objects of investigation, or to be played around with in a way that would mock the obsession over individual creativity and identity in the work; or obsession over the signature considered as a hot art-market commodity. Especially if the poems are mass-produced or "generated" (purposefully created as "ready-made" art-objects) as some people here are suggesting. Duchampism sans provocation or defamiliarization. Neo-Duchampism reduced to dull blog posts and the indifferent digital silence of .pdf files I guess, released (as usual) in the capacity of a resounding dud upon the sacrificial alter where notions of "interesting provocation" are sent to get beheaded.
This is all mildly amusing at the expense of anyone who would actually care that their work was being used in this way I suppose, but it's exactly because hardly anyone does care, or that everyone is "in the know" and "rolling with the punches" of approbation that this doesn't really seem like any kind of avant-gardiste gambit (if that's what it was meant to be). The ultimate effect seems to be that people are happy to see themselves name dropped as poster boy appendages of a rather predictable exercise, a routine circle jerk.
"If an artist today signs a stove pipe and exhibits it, that artist certainly does not denounce the art market but adapts to it" (Bürger).
Here, Duchampism is accepted and utilized as a banalized art practice, further banalized through this release even. Signatures involved in the circulation of this practice adapt to an accepted form of Duchampism and gain allure. The homogeneity of this predictable reception, the inflation and lauding of its general uninventiveness, is a testament to what makes it aesthetically boring. It evokes kind of a "meh" or "feh" more than anything. Perhaps, if we dip into Kenny G's language, it is a "boring boring" moment. It amounts to a large advertisement of 'good' poets, everyone is included, smug as a bug in a rug!
I'm reminded of a phrase from David Riff, in that the ideas behind this surface-provocation seem to be, more than anything, "part of the bourgeois bohemian toolbox, applied in virtuosic bricollage" and thus the application sort of runs counter to any kind of sharp or exciting inventiveness. I mean, can this merry little gesture even be considered a prank? Or clever in any sense?
Emphasizing my point, Mathias Svalina writes:
"This is one of the first good jokes in contemporary poetry. I can't stop laughing at this; its hilarious in so many ways. I'm pretty pleased with my poem in it. I think i'll put it in my next book."
Granted, I'm sure it wasn't meant to be anything more than playful and lighthearted. It just seems uninteresting to me insofar as it is an explicit act of data collation as advertisement as canonization.

I'm in it, and I'm not pissed off. Does that mean I'm not part of the poetry community?

I still can't figure out why all these different people are taking credit for poems I wrote. As I explain on my blog:
Well, I knew this would happen sooner or later. Apparently, some scheming ne'er-do-wells have deliberately STOLEN over 3,000 poems from my continuing life-work, The EU Butter Mountains of Old, and have published them as an "anthology" with each poem being credited to a different poet. I knew my genius would not go unexploited by the freedom-hating blogorissimos who infest every corner of this series of tubes, but I'll be goshdarned–GOSHDARNED, I TELL YOU!–if these scalawags don't expect me to fight back. Whoever is responsible for this travesty, hear me now: I will use every resource at my disposal, I will stop at nothing, I will chase you round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition's flame before I give you up!

Call me "dour and humorless" if you like, but my sense of humor is really not the issue. If someone published an article containing false information about me, I would want it removed from the Web; it is no different for them to claim I wrote a certain poem when I did not.
It is my basic right to protect my name and reputation, and I find it really tasteless that some people would laugh this off as some kind of avant-garde experiment. If my name is to be used in some sort of artistic "experiment," it should be with my permission. To do it without my permission is unethical as well as illegal.
This "anthology" should be taken down immediately. Anyone know a good lawyer who can write a cease-and-desist letter?

Of course, a poem I must have written in my sleep, or computer dreams! Best thing I've written in ages. Or that other Jill Jones is at it again (sheesh). Anyway, I too will publish in my next book.
Sure made me (f)larf this morning, after (I swear this is true) a stupid dream about anthologies. I must get out more.

After a careful study of the 3, 164 names in the table of contents, we've come to the conclusion that poets of color are under-misrepresented in this anthology. We hope the editors will lend a blind eye to this oversight in future niggardly chicanery.
Mendi+Keith Obadike

If you google stephen mclaughlin + new jersey + poetry the first thing that comes up is the ill-fated jessica smith outside voices anthology--he's one of the contributors! finally, the actually funny version of that (and this in general) sad sad farce.

See, what you guys don't realize is how advanced technology is. We have the technology now to have poems published before they're even written. What you're reading now is happening now.

Margaux,
Perhaps “Situationist” is a bit of a stretch, but you give the reception too much credit by putting all of the weight solely on Mathias’ response. Many folks are pissed off, arguing over the use of their names, the poems attributed to them, etc. Check out the comments on the For Godot blog and here on the Harriet blog. It’s ridiculous. No one is making money, people looking for poetry aren’t exactly dying to read the poems within nor are they being turned off of my work because they don’t like “my” poem in the anthology, etc. The joke is situationist in spirit because of the uproar it’s causing within a community that really should not be so devoted to ownership and ego. And you’ll note, I wasn’t exacting a science when I dubbed it Situationist; that was one label among several that I loosely noted *in parenthesis*, rather than proclaiming these guys the new Situationists. Let’s be less stringent and police less, stop being obsessed with 'correct' labels, I think the thrust of this anthology-joke might be hinting at, among other bubbles of infectious laughter produced.
As I wrote on the Poetics listserv:
For what’s it worth, kudos to these three young guys. I imagine they’re students, twiddling their thumbs, trying to imagine how to stir up the poetry world, steeped in some sort of theory (situationist? dada-ist? surrealism? etc), facing the menacing world of “getting published” and making something of themselves as poets, ahem. They’ve decided to take on the death of the lyrical I, the death of the author, the death of paper, the celebration of the internet sea, etc. They’ve done something, though just what isn’t clear and is being debated now (a good effect), but yes, kudos to their efforts to make a mess of the pool of internet muck – it may be only a ripple in the end, but maybe some of the worthwhile work and sites and ideas will get a chance to rise (not necessarily from the anthology) after their pebble has sunk to disappearance.
** Will people be moved away from the complacent world of "I just wanna be a published famous poet" that so often rules in Poetry World? This mentality is the best absorption the capitalist machinery can do with poets and their "products." I doubt this "anthology" will break this cycle and stop poets from thinking in those terms, but at least it's challenging the "my poetry should be published, make me book sale profits, & get me reading gigs" mentality, computer-generated or not. It has at least spotlighted this mentality through it's challenge to ownership & mis-attribution, so again I say, Kudos!
Amy

Hate to break it to you Danny, but if you have a blog and you have willingly placed your name on the internet, your name is already being used by countless marketing companies and spammers for all kinds of purposes without your express written permission.

wasn't there already a mcpoetry name porn situationist joke like this before...called mipoesis magazine or something like that--oh, wait, that was for real.

Here's something entirely apropos, which went up, apparently, just three or four days before the For Godot anthology: The Mediocre Review, a gathering place for the production of "anonymous, heteronymous, or homonymous texts," as the introductory manifesto proclaims.
The project, school, whatever it is, already has, I just checked, 40 members. Though my name is mentioned as an influence in the introductory "manifesto" (and as the Flarfists and Conceptualists show in practice, why should one not wear the badge of Mediocrity with pride?), I only found out about it two days ago through the grapevine. Maybe both projects are managed by the same team of people?
The group's mission statement follows.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28350273397
The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
--Fernando Pessoa
I want to collect and edit anonymous, heteronymous, or homonymous short texts. Of course this is ethically questionable under the umbrella of private property, a unified sense of self, and to any one left holding a stake. I don’t care whether you’re an insider who thinks she’s an outsider or an outsider who thinks she’s an insider. I am unique, just like everyone else.
Without the brand of your name, the question of aesthetic hierarchy verbs you: it frees you of the burden and benefit of how what you’ve done makes who you are. I hope this fashion of editorial work and publication catches on because we need less efficient ways to handle each other as we gaze down the long horror-corridor of “us” versus “them.” Virginia Woolf said anon. has more often than not meant women authors and more recently Kent Johnson and Patricia Smith have questioned the political use of identity in the valuation process of cultural artifacts.
These are the authorless texts that matter because even though we may be up to our consciousness in arbitrary signification and biography, language can titillate and tantalize in substantive and transformative ways. Post-ironic as this may sound, without faith, wisdom and its pleasurable play is just information in the cosmos between your ears. With faith comes the yoke of progress and the pageant of heritage dressed in the drag of political agenda.
The Mediocre Review offers writers and readers the opportunity to erase themselves and by such biographical suicide to give their texts a measure of independence and life. Putting intention aside as unknowable, Cioran is wrong: there should be a hierarchy of suicides but not between the range of noble to vulgar but between the useful and useless.
In the spirit of Nietzsche’s call for a revaluation of all values or in the spirt of Dada's call for going back to primitive sounds, let’s make new beauty that makes the right people uncomfortable.
Sincerely,
Armando

I hope this is one of KG's pieces - it reads and looks like it and is absolutely wonderful - in a sense it's really the first new media writing I've seen. Amazing! - Alan

Hey. Cool. I don't quite get the poem attributed to me, but maybe I'll put it on my vita.
Bob

To Amy: Not all of us live in the "complacent world" you have described. In my own world, I couldn't give two shits about being a "famous published poet," who thinks "my poetry should be published, make me book sale profits, & get me reading gigs, computer-generated or not." Speak for yourself, please. Tell me again, what exactly is it challenging?
In general: I don't think these idiots are intelligent enough to have thought "situationist" or "Duchampian."
How does one create a detournement out of a detournement? Or make something Duchampian out of something Duchampian? Hey, that's been done before too. There's no such thing as an original idea. LOL, ROTFMLAO.
Stephen Mc-LAUGH-lin. McHee. McHee. McHee.

My poem was pretty crappy, but I used it to write a new poem SUGARBEAR.
Fetishized forever on my blog.

Erica T Carter wrote these poems!
http://etc.wharton.upenn.edu:8080/Etc3beta/Poems.jsp?PoemID=66

Well, the poem under which my name appears, on page 1000 (nice even number) is not without virtue, perhaps, but I did not write it.

An additional twist I find perhaps more interesting than the anthology itself is that the project - even when it was just an announcement ("coming soon") - has brought in so many online comments from "the authors" listed, that in effect the editors have curated an additional anthology - If you complain in the blog comment fields, you are signing your name to text you wrote & submitted to forgodot. So in effect you have a second (para?)anthology consisting of many of the same authors complaining about inclusion in the first - and whose complaints (I was not asked permission, that's not my work, etc) cannot apply to the status of the complaints themselves (I AM the author of this text, which I have willingly submitted to forgodot).
David Buuck

I'm loving these responses! What we've all done is participate in, advertise, and create the bulk of a piece of digital performance art. It's like putting a pre-op transexual covered in spaghetti into a store window, then taping the reactions of people who pass by. These reactions are the art installation, not the tranny! I heart Google Alerts.

My poem's not too bad, I've definitely written worse.

Mighty inventive. I get what they're doing--these "hoaxters". They are throwing the poetry "community" into one voice. Did anyone notice all of the poems sound exactly the same? Not one was much different from the other.

I feel sad not to have been included...
Maybe I'm not writing enough.
Maybe I'm not popular enough.
Maybe I snubbed the wrong somebody.
Halitosis?
B.O.?
*sniff*

i'll be more impressed when this is available as an iPhone app

If these responses are the performance [art], it's still not much of a performance, [let alone art]. Actual spray paint vandalism beats this playground teasing by a long shot.

I disagree, Doodle. If art's primary purpose is to stir an emotional response (the secondary being to make the observer think/reconsider, etc.), then I think this was quite effective. It certainly got us talking to one another, and it made me some new friends.
I do agree that there's some playground teasing going on, especially those who've brought up litigation. Sheesh!

This is no Kenneth Goldsmith, unless KG has been perpetuating this since 2004. The guy's real name is
Stephen Reid McLaughlin. 22 years old.
Here's his livejournal blog:
http://arsonisnoway.livejournal.com/
Profile:
http://arsonisnoway.livejournal.com/profile

I really cannot believe that more hasn't been written on this topic -- I've searched the Internet, and people are like "hey, it's cool" or "hey it's not cool," -- but it really opens up all kinds of interesting questions, at least, for me -- and the content, IMHO is worthy of a 20-page review. I do feel like someone wrote most of the poems -- perhaps with generated text (which would explain the consistent semantic field) -- but shaped, and shaped, tonally, into a way that a poem "is," or at least, in my estimation -- the kind of poem for which I'm looking. When Dorthea Lasky published "Awe," I was bummed because I was working on something tonally similar. When I read "Issue 1" I was elated and bummed, because a. some of these poems "nailed" what I search for as a reader and a writer and because what's left then? What's left?
I was impressed by the manifesto at Action Books -- looking for poems that go too far or fail -- I don't know if they've lived up to that, because most of the poems in their books are pretty damn good and pretty damned polished. What's in "Issue 1," in my opinion are totally passable poems -- many of them waaayyyyyy better than what constitutes, say, an issue of "New American Writing." This is subjective of course, but I totally dig these poems.
One other note that I found fascinating. I went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the early 2000s, and created a somewhat Iowa-centric version of the poetry community in my head. James Galvin, Mark Levine, Cole Swensen and my contemporaries, i.e. the younger poets publishing and winning contests 4-5 years before I went to Iowa: Matthea Harvey, Matthew Rohrer, Tessa Rumsey, Rebecca Wolff, Katy Lederer, Spencer Short, Peter Richards -- and even a web spinning out from there with the former Verse Press -- Zapruder, Beckman, Hawkey -- and the journals from the time. These writers kind of summed up an aesthetic that I find
It was seriously, right about the time that I left Iowa, that I realized that that is a very NARROW, NARROW part of the poetry world and that there are a million MFAs and a million poets out there working overtime with Google feeds for their names and DIY and Lulu projects, etc., etc.
I remember it was Anthony Robinson that said the blog world was the "New Iowa." Meaning, I think, that the on-line, DIY, micro-press, Lulu, etc. was in the process of superceding the academic hierarchy.
And here we come to what I think is the most fascinating part of "Issue 1." The names are primarily the 1. Dead and Cannonized, the 2. Mid-Career Academic Set and 3. The Blog World -- and the blog world associated with "post avant" or the avant-garde or something. None of the abovementioned poets are on the list, and only one or two of the more talented people from my own time at Iowa are on the list (Lucy Ives and Zach Savich -- both lovely and brilliant poets) -- but missing is Arda Collins -- who just won the Yale Younger award and has poems in APR and the New Yorker, Debbie Kuan, Dora Malech, Robert Fernandez, Kiki Petrosino -- all innovative poets with books from big presses or scores of fellowships, publishing credits, etc. -- and most/many of the people that are not dead or mid-career in "Issue 1" are blog, DIY, Lulu, micro, collective -- related.
Iowa or no Iowa, I'm all for undermining hierarchies, or at least looking at them, but whoever wrote "Issue 1," I think, more than anything just created an anthology of a new democracy in poetry. Or a shapshot of crumbling -- in less than 10 years -- academic hierarchy in poetry. Or creating a parallel universe or something. Anyway. I know it's convoluted, but I'm not in tip-top explaining shape right now.
Thing is -- I can't really get my mind off of Issue 1 -- it was like I was sitting around waiting for something like it -- for a couple years now -- something that said, whether intentional or not, some of the things I think about -- and I haven't even touched whether the material is really human or generated and what that means, yet. I think it's human, but if it were generated, that just gets even more fascinating.

He was valedictorian of his high school graduating class of 2004 in Delanco Township, NJ.
Population 3,237.
Nice way to get all the free publicity you can eat, quick, without having to do the hard work, eh?

A Kenneth Goldsmith co-production!
"Featuring the work of 3, 164 poets. Completely unpermissioned and unauthorized, pissing off the entire poetry community. Either you're in or you're not. "

Santa Claus is a pedophile and if I had kids he would be SHOT coming down the chimney!
This is not a hoax, but neither is the anthology?
In Pennsylvania where I live we have the LEAST amount of paper trail for election votes per voting machine per voter. This is not a hoax, but so is the anthology.
Crying and praying is the same release Joni Mitchess once sang, or something about laughing.
CAConrad

I disagree that art's primary purpose is to stimulate emotion, but one's mileage may vary!

Pray tell, "Doodle", what is art?

I'm an authority on what "art" is?? Hooray!

"Nice way to get all the free publicity you can eat, quick, without having to do the hard work, eh?"
I think putting together a 3000 page pdf is hard work, no matter how or why it's done!

These poems are clearly all by the same person. Someone with an enormous amount of spare time on their hands too, unless any of the poems repeat; if they're on a loop, in other words.
Someone above asked if it was a joke aimed at avant poets. But I'm not particularly avant, so that's unlikely, unless they chose me in error. It would be interesting to know where the names were sourced from. Most seem to be American, for instance, but again I'm not, and there are other British poets on the list besides myself.
So, this is an interesting and highly provocative thing to do. But what statement, if any, is it trying to make? Presumably that authorship is no longer quantifiable in an age of computer technology and internet poetry, where anonymity, or the assumption of a false name, or the generating of lists of poems attributed to randomly assigned poets is so much easier to assemble and promote and distribute than it would be in print.
To threaten to sue seems a touch absurd though. Who really cares? No one's reputation is going to be threatened by this kind of stunt, after all. Everyone's clear on the fact that it's a hoax, so why waste time and energy on pursuing the perpetrator?

Pretty cool.
I flarfed mine:
Turning hillsides into Chili
It transports the rattlesnakes, returns the spermatic log~OI!
Rarely beginning, neighing, staggering silently at horse steaks
in an everlasting hillside, my badass hideout with bandit whores
Shrill and altered (who, moi?)
Is it wounded? Candida is a carved whale cockpit.
Lanny Quarles

It can be done in an hour, easy, Matt, especially if you have two or three monkeys... I mean typists.

But wouldn't the monkeys come up with some real Shakespeare if they typed long enough?

Very funny. A primer on group dynamics and search engine optimization rolled in one.

Is this the most comments a Harriet blog post has ever received?
Um, case in point.
xo,
Amy

It's an interesting mirror. Nice to know that someone is paying attention, isn't it?
Nada, I'm a little envious that you got first place.
lh

Guys, when I owned up to having written the poem they published under my name, they removed it. Almost immediately. It was a really uncomfortable moment, telling my friends "hey, download this! I'm in it!" and having them turn around and say "no you aren't".
Look at all the people reading though. Probably, for a lot of us, we've got more of a shot at getting noticed by posting comments on this thing than we have by publishing our own work. How depressing.

The poem ascribed to me is not written by me. I just wanted to point that out.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII3240987a98wezosfnvnzsd8r4u203984ajlasdfjaaldskjarewuoianvle wuarhao;v, aouerlajwefnw-ir-23892-a[fia9=10=aav;,z/c./kawpoit-2q3r95-23iba;js;lfk
afd;lkaero[iwe-3-8532-8afasmnv.z,.mxc.mapwiotuwpuaspjf;kasmfdasjjasdf;asjk
ar3-irakfmz.,zmkar-03919z;cm/z,sdf;lakwetr293-59aiakfsd;
PEOIfmav.a3-i8a'dkvma
we09r23oq[mz;li2-39akf;,zvxc/m,49529a;fkas;fj;af
sadkf;asl af;sdfk;asdkf;lsadkf;asldkf asf as;dfk;asfk;asfk;asfk;asdfkweiasfi;zm
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiii
Sincerely,
Sampson Starkweather

I feel sorry for anyone who really takes issue with any of this (who thinks, without laughter, that it is "downright lawful")--------
i mean, C'mon !!!!!
if you think it's funny, laugh.
and if you don't: it's probably best to just keep quiet.

I don't mind if some computer borrows my name to write mediocre poems; but can the programmer please learn to spell "vermilion"?

I find this social experiment mildly fascinating. But may I please point out:
For all the talk about lawsuits, author attribution, anarchy, uncreative writing, exposing egos, revealing senses of humor or the lacks thereof, or de-contextualizing words from names, poems from authors, copyrighted material from flarf. Et Cetera. Ad Nauseam.
Doesn't all this internet/chaos theory/lang-post-avant B.S. simply aggrandize Kenneth Goldsmith as its patron saint? What is this really about, if it's not about him?

It seems some are thinking Kenny agrees with the haters, I can't imagine he does. In fact I thought of him first when I opened the pdf file. Did people actually submit to this? Was there some sort of standard process which was part of the bluff? And Sina, how did an actual poem get in there? Someone pointed to a penn state program which generated the poetry, I'll post it here if I find it...

My vomit is more disappointed now than before it came out.

I wish it came from Penn State, a Big Ten school. Alas, it is actually the University of Pennsylvania, of the inferior Ivy League ;)

I am as proud of my contribution to this anthology as I am of any work my "I" thinks it wrote. and "I" hereby claim this poems til the end of time. And after ...

I still think it's funny to refer to a poetry community.

I love that Tao Lin thinks it's funny and approves of it. Tao Lin is so cool.

I wish the extremists in this thread would calm down a bit. Hating on this project, and going to the lengths of even typing "lawsuit," is the equivalent of waving a flag that says, "Never read my poetry, ever again."

All is vanity. Very amusing.

Bukowski and Beatrix Potter in the same anthology. Whoohoo!
Dear Bogus & Inclusive Editors: You are free to link to me at http://www.myspace.com/sarahsarai . I'm an American. Fame is good fame is good fame is good.
Most surprises lately have been horrifying (the markets, Palin).
This one's a hoot.

Many or most of the writers in this anthology have never composed a better poem. Ironic that the only thing preventing so many poets from becoming good poets has been their own creative impulses.

Is this the YouTube of poetry?

this is funny & funnier yet that people even care about personal rep -
ah, the wonders of narcissism and 'print'...

Ironically, I didn't know about google alerts before reading about all this. And it's certainly not very often that a bunch of people like everyone above would have been drawn into discusion about a common topic.
I'm interested to what extent the poems attributed to people drew upon certain keywords- mine contained 'kingdom' which is a word that appears in many of my bios online, though it could be a fluke.
I'm really not worried about it- it highlights in an amusing way just how obsessed with their own name many poets are (though no more so than, say, politicians). And besides, as google tells me there's a famous Sam Byfield who plays football in England, and it might have been him who wrote the poem.

Great project... But it could be good to bring in some non-poetic feeds/alerts...just to get a little cross-contamination going. Who knows what poetry that might liberate....

More fake (read "clever") art!

This is the wildest thing I have ever seen. As a struggling artist it would be nice to be able to decide where your work is posted but the wildest thing about this odd little PDF is that my name is attached to a poem I didn't write. A very nice poem but not one I wrote.

I just wanted to say, I love it. Via someone else's genius I have attained what I have always wanted - my name absorbed into the impersonality of word as function, reduced to letters as the intimate strands of poetic imagery must themselves be. What author doesn't write to fuse with the form? And yet so many here have bristled at the stealing of 'their' name. Whoever masterminded this, the Situationists would be kissing your feet if they were alive/ cared about poetry.

i want to read the poem this head of mine is tired by sedar senghor and also get the analysis of the poem

Hmmm.
I'm included (which was a surprise) for a poem I didn't write (more surprising).
Kinda liked the poem, though. Kinda, though it's definitely not my style.
Noticed you did attribute to established, academic poets like Albert Goldbarth, Jack Myers, and Lyn Lifshin. Perhaps you're afraid they have the where-withal to shut you down?
Go pick on poets your own size.
Please don't do this again.
Thanks.

When i first read about this project i didn't even check whether i was in it. Since googling myself and finding out i am in it I'm sort of flattered. I didn't write the poem that's attributed to me, but I'm sort of tempted to post it to my blog - look what someone else wrote for me? Its all very weird, amusing and fascinating

Tao,
How dare you take credit for 3,000+ poems that I just found out I wrote? I hope we can settle this out of court. Perhaps over lunch. Or through my agent. Over lunch. Or via lunch? What do you eat? Do you eat over agent?
Anyway, thanks to all of you for your contributions. Especially me. And me. And to Tao: it's either a dunning letter or some food. Your choice.
Solidarity,
David Michael Wolach
aka, Kent Johnson

hmmm... 123 comments... it appears to be interesting linkbait as well...

Hey, wait a minute. I just tried to dowload the collection I wrote, and it appears that due to the heat of a few individuals mistaking their work for mine and threatening suit, I didn't get the chance to read what I'd just written and published. Damn thing was taken down.
Countersuit: Will anyone join me in suing said individuals for the digital rights to my own name? I know I put it there right at the top, under "author." And now poof! They took it from me. I would simply like what is rightfully mine. I can't go around like this. Nobody knows what to shout now when they pass by. I was in a faculty meeting this morning and voted on a proposal for softer lounge chairs, had to file my ballot under "John Doe." Important election is coming up. Now what?
And whoever that David Buuck guy is (supposing that's his real name), I could not have said it better: a para-anthology. To make an addition I'm sure he wouldn't disagree with: the transitory decor of the para-anthology makes it impossible to turn the page, let alone read left to right or up to down, & etc. There is something para-talmudic about its framentary hyperstructure. I think that's neat. That's why I'm editing it. And, to politely disagree with Angela G. (aka Tao Lin), my collection, were it actually written by all these wannabes, should most certainly be considered a detournement (but not a "radical" one - as that would just be redundant). Perhaps you dislike my poems, but then why desire credit for them (don't forget - Debord made some bad movies, and his precursor, Hugo Ball, culdn't even spell)? And if one decrees credit, or ownership, then why help me construct Issue 2, the Para-Anthology? Slavoj and I are really tight, like, we watch the OC together & shit., but one can levee the claim of armchair activism against him too. Oh, and he stole the notion of fantasy transgression from FN - "imaginary revenge." F Y I.
Kent Johnson

Well, this is probably the first and only time I'll ever find myself mentioned on the Poetry Foundation website! Beyond that, I am left to believe a computer a writer does not make. An algorithm does not an identity displace. I won't laud the 'editors' of this thick binary invention, but I won't attempt to boil their flesh, either. I like the idea, but the execution? I have enough ego to say nay. They are clearly bigger fans of Burroughs than I.

It's a little late for this, but:
the piece to which my name is assigned
appears on page 2244
and I would like to know if
that page was chosen by a human,
by the program used for the word objects,
or if it was just a random event.
Thank you.

This is fantastic and proof vanity Googling is the berries.

Well gee, your using my name attached to nothing (or I can't find it) Okay I have spent my whole life as such, So here's my poem to make, make even less sense. I stole it from myself
Trinity
As I walked along I looked
across into the cemetery,
to see two young mated hawks,
a kin to eagles
light
upon the limbs
their white underlining
matches the virgin
snow that
Falls
leaves
behind the graves
of those who have come to rest
upon the souls
save
the vein
each a barren branch
whose darkness looks beneath
heaven
for gravity
is a mortal belonging
to the heart
which remains but a stone eternity
bearing the names
of those who have forsaken
divine provenance
for all their Earthly possessions
instead of the love
which gave them life
now gives them only bones
discarded by the birds of
prey
for who have departed
*for
“…Who appointeth the clouds for His ascent,
Who walketh upon the wings of the wind,
Who maketh his Angels spirits, and
His ministers
a flame of fire…”
As for me I am humbled by this vision,
for I know my days are like grass,
**“…as a flower of the field, so blossom forth.
For when the wind is passed over it, then shall be gone,
and no longer will it know the place thereof…”
For I know my life to be as
filled with the mercy
of my Lord who is forever,
there I shall go too,
leaving behind the prints
of my sole to melt and vanish
in the warmth of the Son.
Frank Simone 12 / 23/ 08
* psalm 103 / **102

This is audacious. Has this lasted past a microsecond in Oct. 2008?

Didn't piss me off in the least. It's flattering, if anything. It's a piece of conceptual art, and ahead of the curve, given the recent Googlebooks wholesale rip-off. The sheer volume of poets included also makes a point in a field where the unique individual voice is supposed to be primary. If you think of it the right way, it's the opposite of theft: we're being given a free poem (whether we like it or not, granted).\r

I don't see what the fuss is about.

This was sort of funny, I guess. The poem attributed to me was utter garbage. Everyone is meta. Now even this is.