Banango Lit

Matt Margo is the author of Friends Let Friends Let (self-published, 2011) and When Empurpled (Pteron Press, 2011). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in many places, including Red Lightbulbs, New Wave Vomit, West Wind Review, and Poetry by Emily Dickinson. He is an undergrad at Hiram College in Ohio. Justin and Rachel asked him questions about flarf writing and he responded.

Justin Carter:  You described your new book as a ‘flarf novella’ when you asked me to blurb it. Where did this idea come from? How does flarf work with a form like the novella where flarf has never really been?

Matt Margo: First of all, thanks again for blurbing the book, Justin. I normally would not have bothered to solicit blurbs from anybody because I am unsure of how effective or necessary blurbs actually are, but they seemed appropriate for this work in particular.

To be honest, despite that my initial intention with Friends Let Friends Let was to attempt to create some sort of flarf novella, I’m not so certain that it does in fact qualify as a novella now that it’s finished. There is a passage in Christopher Higgs’s The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney—which is a truly awesome novel, by the way—that describes how being an experimental writer means regarding spectacle as the top priority rather than plot. Whereas that book very much succeeds at considering spectacle first and foremost without altogether abandoning story in the process, I feel that my book does not and that it cannot really be read as a work of fiction after all. I thought that the book would work as a flarf novella as long as its fiction aspect remained with the idea of community, since community is such an important component of flarf as a movement—especially with everything that writers like Steve Roggenbuck have done for it. In terms of plot, however, all that maintained that idea of community were the original titles for each chapter/section of the book. Most of those titles were simply the names of different “characters” and they meant to transform every section into a vignette but just didn’t. There is still a theme of community as far as spectacle but not as far as plot. Not to me, at least.

Rachel Hyman:  Adding to this idea of a ‘flarf novella’: Do you feel ‘flarf fiction’ is possible? Do you feel like the difference between flarf fiction and flarf poetry is similar to the disconnect between mainstream fiction and mainstream poetry?

MM: I do feel that flarf fiction is possible, and whether or not I have in fact failed with Friends Let Friends Let, I hope that someone somewhere someday produces something that helps to establish the same sort of disconnect for flarf as that which has been established for other more mainstream literary movements. When I mention this disconnect, I don’t mean a disconnect in terms of form, like the differentiation between prose and poetry or something like that. Instead, I mean that I’d like to see a separation between flarf fiction and flarf poetry in terms of content and character, if that makes any sense. When you read a work of Beat Generation poetry and a work of Beat Generation fiction, you can identify significantly characteristic similarities and differences between the two because each possesses its own spark that the other just doesn’t have, despite all of those similarities. I’d like to be able to recognize a novel as flarf but not flarf poetry and a poem as flarf but not flarf fiction, regardless of however many line breaks or paragraph breaks there may be.

JC: Keeping on the subject of flarf, what drew you to flarf writing?

MM: Spencer Madsen stated in a recent interview that flarf “feels fun” to him, and flarf definitely feels fun to me as well. I would also agree with Spencer that it allows for a notable amount of stylistic diversity, which was partially what drew me to flarf writing when I discovered it. There are certain authors who argue that the flarf movement lacks any potential for sincerity or seriousness and that most flarf writing attempts only to be funny, but I believe that those authors’ arguments are wrong. I do not view flarf as an opponent of conceptualism because most if not all of the flarf that I’ve read has been somehow poignant and provocative even while being absurd and hilarious. Otherwise, people probably wouldn’t have embraced the work of Sharon Mesmer or Kasey Mohammad as much as they had when flarf poetry emerged onto the scene. It is the coupling of context with the execution of that context that I find so endearing about flarf: the perfect sort of ‘anti-literature.’ I am an enthusiast of flarf because of its what, how, and why.

JC: As the editor of CMDT, how does that effect your own writing? Does it? Should it?

MM: Whenever I’m exposed to a new form of writing, I always consider the ways in which that form is furthering or vitalizing literature as a whole, and then I consider what I could do to contribute to those ways. The new forms of writing that I tend to like the most are the ones without a clear resolution to my considerations. That is more or less why I started CMDT, and since then, I have gained this certain perspective of my own writing that causes me to read every piece or poem or story or project as if it wasn’t mine, which seems so cliché and impossible, but it is true. In addition to editing the blog, I’m also currently interning as an editorial assistant for the Hiram Poetry Review, so even if it is in fact impossible to truly read your own work as an outsider, I am definitely feeling the impression that it happens.

JC:  I wanted to ask you about Hiram Review also, but wasn’t sure if you worked there or not. I’m an EA at Gulf Coast, so I understand a little of the workings of ‘academic’ journals.Do you ever see work that is ‘exciting’ and ‘fresh’ (like flarf/ alt lit) kind of stuff submitted there? What’s your perception of the influence this stuff has on the more established poetry world?

MM: My experience with Hiram Poetry Review has been great so far, and although I haven’t come across any flarf submissions yet, I have read quite a bit of exciting and fresh work. I feel more willing to embrace the term “flarf” in this answer than the terms “academic” and “alt.” I understand the context of them both, but unlike flarf writing, “academic” and “alt” writing seem to lack solid meaning, in my opinion (hence the scare quotes). Perhaps solid meaning isn’t necessary, but what I mean is that I have never liked to recognize “alternative” as a genre of anything, be it music or literature or art. I think it was Harmony Korine who once stated about alternative music during an interview, “Alternative to what?” With the exception of specific genres, movements, mindsets, etc., I prefer to “level the playing field” and treat everything with a similar gathering of my aesthetic and ideological reasons for liking or disliking or reacting to it as I do. When I read submissions for Hiram Poetry Review and pick up a poem about the ocean, I don’t disapprove of it for being written in a literary or traditional style, and I don’t approve of it for being written in an unorthodox, post-Internet style. Because I aesthetically hate poetry about the ocean, there is a higher chance of me disliking it, but I always try my best to move beyond that and locate other aesthetic or ideological factors that would affect my decision. I support the majority of writing I’ve read that has been classified as alt lit, but not for the sole reason that it is different from the more established or accepted lit world.

JC: What writers do you feel are on the ‘cutting edge’ of experimental writing right now?

MM: “[T]he ‘cutting edge’ of experimental writing” seems like a redundant phrase to me since the point of literary experimentation is to try to cut the edge, but a few of my favorite experimental writers include (in no particular order) Peter Ganick, Tim Gaze, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Nigel Tomm, Timo Tuhkanen, Keith Higginbotham, Christopher Higgs, Tantra Bensko, Billy Bob Beamer, and Neon Glittery. I also feel proud that Kenneth Patchen and I were both born and raised in Niles, Ohio, but he’s not a contemporary author.

RH: Can you elaborate on the idea of there not being a ‘cutting edge’? I’ve always felt like even the most experimental writing eventually seems to become less ‘experimental’ over time as it is more accepted. What is your conception of experimental writing and these writers you mentioned?

MM: To me, the idea is not that there is no ‘cutting edge,’ but that experimental writing is the ‘cutting edge,’ more or less. I would agree that certain approaches and certain authors grow less experimental over time as other experimentation emerges, but to try to elaborate on how the term really ought to be applied—if at all—would stir up a different discussion entirely, and a complicated one at that! I view Christopher Higgs as the current sort of forerunner in that territory and strongly recommend checking out his “What is Experimental Literature?” series at HTMLGIANT for a deeper, more refined and focused examination of experimental writing. To be brief, my conception of experimental writing is that we need it, that we need those experimental writers to continue to write. It’s not the type of necessity that can be readily explained, verified, or understood; it simply is.

RH: Where do you see your place in the ‘larger alt-lit scene’?

MM: Again, since I am not entirely keen on the term ‘alt lit,’ I tend not to concern myself with my place in its scene, or any scene, for that matter. The Internet is a truly astounding phenomenon though. I owe my current status as a writer to Facebook and Gmail and Blogspot and Tumblr. The presence of community is so strong nowadays that it can sometimes seem overwhelming, like something too remarkable and marvelous and unbelievable to ever be completely taken in as a normal facet of our everyday lives. The Internet is what made this interview possible! It is what made the publication of my first print book possible. How else could it have happened? To mail a query to Finland? I feel so blessed just to be a part of the modern literary world that there would be no sense in wondering where I stand or where I want to be. I am, it do, they be.

RH: How has growing up in Ohio effected your literary development?

MM: Not having been out of Ohio often enough, I couldn’t tell you. Much like Stephen King, I almost always set my fiction pieces in my home state. Do most writers do that?

JC: Why do you write?

MM: Rather than trying to think of specific reasons, I am going to stick with the simple answer that I write because I just have to write.