The odd thing about the latest blab movement, which they're calling Conceptual Poetics, is that it seems to be made by poets who have no ideas. There are no themes, no topics, & no artistic concepts about how to shape & present same. The only idea in play seems to be the same one that underwrites the making of processed cheese (although processed cheese is more substantial). Take a prior artefact and run it through a processor, or homogenizer. This will get a laugh & win you a place in the Conceptual Poetry Movement (or Process). It's sort of like Flarf with a straight(er) face, a more determined (prosaic) pose. I don't know why I'm bothering to talk about it. I guess it's part of my Friday-at-work process.

"Knowledge is Power". & there is a kind of will-to-power on display in the foregrounding of conceptualization for its own sake. It's the fascination with finding the magic algorithm, the inner overlap structure, the handle-grip of the machine, the key. Like starting a lawn mower : sudden burst of control over all that grass. Then to pretend that it's not about power, that it's simply (un)artistic (unvalued, unoriginal, uncreative) free play : classic move of every intellectual game & ideology.

John Latta's post today, on the other hand, is classic Latta. Here the self-consciousness of the writer - the knowledge-overlap, reflexivity - becomes a useful gauge of limits, a rebuke to hubris & self-delusion. Humility as realism - the still-human comedy.