On Purpose

t. Come to t    hink of it,     no one’s rea    lly written     a word of it
. It’s been     grabbed, cut    , pasted, pr    ocessed, mac    hined, honed
, flattened,     repurposed,     regurgitate    d, and refra    med from the
great mass     of free-floa    ting languag    e out there     just begging
to be turne    d into poetr    y. Why atomi    ze, shatter,     and splay l
anguage into     nonsensical     shards when     you can hoa    rd, store, m
old, squeeze    , shovel, so    il, scrub, p    ackage, and     cram the stu
ff into towe    rs of words     and castles     of language     with a strok
e of the key    board? And w    hat fun to w    reck it: kno    ck it down, 
hit delete,     and start al    l over again    . There’s a     sense of glu
ttony, of jo    y, and of fu    n. Like kids     at a touch     table, we’re
delighted t    o feel langu    age again, t    o roll in it    , to get our
hands dirty    . With so mu    ch available     language, d    oes anyone r
eally need t    o write more    ? Instead, l    et’s just pr    ocess what e
xists. Langu    age as matte    r; language     as material.     How much di
d you say th    at paragraph     weighed? Ou    r immersive     digital envi
ronment dema    nds new resp    onses from w    riters. What     does it mea
n to be a po    et in the In    ternet age?     These two mo    vements, Fla
rf and Conce    ptual Writin    g, each form    ed over the     past five ye
ars, are dir    ect investig    ations to th    at end. And     as different
as they are    , they have     surprisingly     come up wit    h a set of s
imilar solut    ions. Identi    ty, for one,     is up for g    rabs. Why us
e your own w    ords when yo    u can expres    s yourself j    ust as well 
by using som    eone else’s?     And if your     identity is     not your ow
n, then sinc    erity must b    e tossed out     as well. Ma    teriality, t
oo, comes to     the fore: t    he quantity     of words see    ms to have m
ore bearing     on a poem th    an what they     mean. Dispo    sability, fl
uidity, and     recycling: t    here’s a sen    se that thes    e words aren
’t meant for     forever. To    day they’re     glued to a p    age but tomo
rrow they co    uld re-emerg    e as a Faceb    ook meme. Fu    sing the ava
nt-garde imp    ulses of the     last centur    y with the t    echnologies 
of the prese    nt, these st    rategies pro    pose an expa    nded field f
or twenty-fi    rst-century     poetry. This     new writing     is not boun
d exclusivel    y between pa    ges of a boo    k; it contin    ually morphs
from printe    d page to we    b page, from     gallery spa    ce to scienc
e lab, from     social space    s of poetry     readings to     social space
s of blogs.     It is a poet    ics of flux,     celebrating     instability
and uncerta    inty.