ACTUALISM WON'T DIE!

From Dave Morice: (June 2012)

I found a hilarious blog dialog that a website called "MetaFilter" had put on the web soon after the Poetry City Marathon. Here's a sample of it below. I suggest you read the whole thing--it's the equifvalent of about 15 double-spaced pages long. Most of it is a rant against the marathon. At one point, someone who liked Poetry Comics steps in. Here's the beginning of that section...

http://www.metafilter.com/100221/and-tapping-my-laptop-with-dots

... Oh holy crap, I know this idiot, "Dr. Alphabet.". I wrote an article about being forcibly subjected to one of his poetry "performances" while I was in elementary school. That article also describes one of his earliest projects, he wrote a poem one mile long. He scribbled on paper rolls from adding machines, and taped them together. Then he unrolled it out in the street and just discarded it where it was. I think of that as sort of being like toilet papering your neighbor's house, except he TPed a mile of the city with lame poetry. I recall reading some of the poem and thinking it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

I am also horrified to discover that this book was bound by my alma mater's Book Arts program. I was thinking of applying to do an MFA in that department. But if they take idiots like Dave Morice seriously, I am having second thoughts. Certainly their 10,000 page book is another stupid stunt, the binding is again worth more than the writing in it.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:57 AM on February 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

http://www.metafilter.com/100221/and-tapping-my-laptop-with-dots

Wow. Wake up on the wrong side of bed this morning? Those Poetry Comics that rory mentioned were pretty excellent.

Yeah, he's a popularizer of poetry. That involves a certain amount of hucksterism, but he's no Tao Lin. 

posted by msalt at 12:16 PM on February 4, 2011

Oh holy crap again, I read the incoherent "Foreword" to this book, it has that damn 1 mile long stunt poem in it.

His Foreword reminds me of an old bit in a Kurt Vonnegut's book that he wrote while he was at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. One of the characters tells a writer he can tell he's a closeted homosexual by the way he formatted his index. I can sense something similar here, the Foreword shows obvious signs of dementia manifesting as logorrhea.

From Steve Toth:

What some people call a stunt others might call a feat.  When I think of a stunt I think about the last time we moved.  When I was a kid & some called you a smart ass you would say I don't see your butt doing any tricks.  I say the same thing to this guy.  Let the poetry speak for itself.  Thou doest protest too much.

Steve

 a month earlier (may 2012) from Steve Toth

Hi Everyone,

The way I remember it, I was getting into the elevator in the EPB to ride up to class & the two of my classmates jumped aboard.  One of them asked me how could I be so foolish as to go against the workshop reading like that.  So I explained that isn't the workshop reading always on Thursday & Epstein's on Tuesday?  So who is switching  to conflict with whom?  The guy didn't heard a word I said.  He just repeated himself when the elevator door opened.  All in all I should have taken the stairs.

 

Dave maybe you could slip in my hamburg inn poem?