Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Queer and Gurlesque are not Mutually Exclusive Terms!

Ana is insisting that I think queer and Gurlesque poetics are mutually exclusive terms. I do not. Not at all.

I initially said: "Queer poetics turn away from the pathology of the hetero, and that is a very excellent thing. Gurlesque poetics embrace and interrogate the pathology."

I assume a queer person can perform in either of these modes, Gurlesque or queer, both of which are available to them. The presence of queers and bis in the anthology is evidence of this.

Unlike Ana, perhaps, I do not assume a queer person can only perform in one mode.

11 comments:

  1. Lara, see my last comment to you. I was reacting to this statement of yours:

    Queer femme poets turn away from the pathology of the hetero. Gurlesque poets embrace the pathology.

    Which you share in the comment fields here:
    http://exoskeleton-johannes.blogspot.com/2010/03/note-on-gurlesque-queering.html

    You say 'queer femme poets' here, not 'queer poetics.' This is the source of my, as you say, insistence. I hope I have been constructive, in my other comment, in explaining why I read this as you saying the gurlesque mode was not available to queer femme poets. It certainly sounded like it.

    I'm not sure I agree with this definition of queer poetics:
    "Queer poetics turn away from the pathology of the hetero." See Amy's examples of queered cock at amyhappens.org :). I might have more to say on that later.

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  2. I think the distinction between "poets" and "poetics" is an absolutely crucial one.

    In the comment box, I meant to say poetics, which is what I explicitly said in my initial post. I can see how this threw you.

    And yes, this description of queer poetics is very cursory, in the way blog transactions are all too apt to be. I am not seeking to gain control over this term.

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  3. Lara, I really do think the gurlesque has awesome potential. I wouldn't have engaged with it so much over the course of days if I didn't think so. I look forward to see where it goes & to other echoes & splashes the anthology generates.

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  4. Thanks so much, Ana.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. The only thing interesting about this whole discussion, is the fact that calling

    hetero,
    a pathology

    is essentially calling life
    a sickness

    which is
    a positive step.

    but

    Socrates said as much
    on his death bed
    when he made a joke
    about sacrificing a cock
    to asclepius.

    Did you know that?
    Not many people do.

    Now.

    Why are poets
    so embroiled with gender?

    Writing as a process,
    is a mechanical object.

    The only proper thing
    for art to be concerned with

    is

    segmentarity and thought.

    Your bodies
    are medical, and medical science
    has all kinds of procedures for your bodies if you can afford them.

    The body is the exemplum of complexity in this universe.

    That is really all that needs to be said.

    Otherwise, I mean, it's cute,
    but

    do you really want to get that involved with what is essenetially

    the delineation of a stylistics.

    sylistics are so
    temporally circumscribed as to be

    trite.

    that's the simplest way to put.

    it makes gender
    and the mystery of the body

    into something like a

    house shoe.

    If I can buy a gurlesque
    experiment in prose or poetry
    or read it, "about it"

    it has become

    a house-shoe.

    People's sexual proclivities
    might be a subject for wiriting
    at this point,

    but why not

    just fuck instead.

    I am glad you discovered
    that life

    is a sickness.

    That is good.

    Now draw a picture of a protein.

    This is slightly more difficult.

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  7. phaneronoemikon -

    It sounds like what you're saying is that the gurlesque is just people expressing on paper what they're afraid to do with their own bodies.

    What a brilliant possibility!

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  8. That's an interesting comment by Max. Is the "pornographic" aspect of Gurlesque substantively reportage or more like fantasy?

    Under a comment below, btw, I ask something about the relationship between Flarf (Nada Gordon specifically) and Gurlesque that I think is interesting in context of "definitions."

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  9. Since Kent has weighed in, or is conjoining in the

    "way of din"

    on the gurlesque.

    My antennae have reported back to me:

    Lanny, show them.

    Gurlesque is of course

    Generative, and URL esq(wire).

    Have you ever noticed the curious vennisonicism

    between girl
    and gryll

    ala gryllus

    hmm.

    where are the bohemian dandy mereologists of any sex, gender,
    or imaginal paramoodisolvennseas..

    The tender lingering among the give word forms is endearingly

    primitive.

    girls as primitive.
    humans as primitives.

    Why only this morning
    I had somehow traveled to a parallel universe

    of angels

    whose blisscree
    was a flow
    wherein mind and matter
    illustrated synonomi

    can you imagine
    the imaginal applicative

    tender plantean emeralda
    you coral of tiny controlled whorls
    of anything

    it is so wonderful
    when the old ones
    let us see pictures
    of the long lost worlds

    there were once cities like coils of dna billions of lightyears long

    amorphous liquid sentience attended
    that music of architecture

    the blood of that old manifold

    i have their dreams

    i alone have surfed the old eons
    of the angels

    i alone have seen

    the ancient cuttle librarian
    with his blood
    of data souls

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  10. hey, this last part is fabulous!

    >Lanny Quarles wrote:

    it is so wonderful
    when the old ones
    let us see pictures
    of the long lost worlds

    there were once cities like coils of dna billions of lightyears long

    amorphous liquid sentience attended
    that music of architecture

    the blood of that old manifold

    [....]
    the ancient cuttle librarian
    with his blood
    of data souls

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  11. yes, well, off curse, the boot, oat ship, or shape

    the grow-tusque came long before

    the grylloosque..

    vennous, echolulliua, that combimatrix



    Ramtha with monocle

    tells of obsidian data shadows furred in surds

    turns words like flint columns
    in a haze or blur of hands

    and

    any kid her hiss its waist in gold

    goats sewn

    so kiss
    the blurney ssss-tone

    avacadabratart

    sac reve orifice

    revenant's bliss

    or royal blisp

    that's sexy
    as deformity
    the universal kind


    R am tha

    like Plato's animal growl entoti

    Rrrr am ther

    therium
    or theorium

    it is all

    participation
    within a hole

    ReplyDelete