What the Flarf?

April 8, 2011 by JOB at 9:10 am

So, here I was minding my own business on an overcast western Wisconsin morning when all of a sudden I come across this essay routed by this website, fluming this commentary as well.

So Flarfing away, I decided to try it. The first two seemingly disparate words that came to mind were “Ulysses” and “Crucible.”

I’m not sure I did it exactly as the dictates of the “form” require, but the experiment yielded interesting results nonetheless, results which I humbly submit to your endearing approval or enduring acrimony:

Ulysses Crucible

More than two decades after,

Here was an ideal tactical crucible –

As theory it was already exalting;

To demonstrate it, it must be tested

In what Dostoevsky called

‘the crucible of doubt’

Packed with charcoal

And submitted to a high furnace-heat –

Fueled by competitive prices

And custom sizes…

For some of us, the earliest memories

Of the name Ulysses Simpson Grant

May not have been from

Pennsylvania climate data

Or Civil War Petersberg –

At any rate, competitive prices

And custom sizes –

Rather the chapter gathers together

All the characters…

But I keep on forgetting about

This one solid truth about Ulysses:

Anger and jealousy destroyed

The passage through Dublin

In a series of competitive prices

And custom sizes…

After all, companies have developed

Their leadership skills

In the crucible of a new culture.

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Comments

Churchill says

April 9, 2011 at 5:23 am

April 8th is a good date – it was a friend’s birthday, when I was a child, although I’m not sure now which friend it was.

Jonathan Webb says

April 11, 2011 at 9:23 pm

Probably someone with whom you attended game parties and played pin-the-tail-upon-the-donkey.