| Annoying
Diabetic Bitch
by Sharon Mesmer
Combo Books ($13.95)
Review by Tim W. Brown
To appreciate Sharon Mesmer’s new poetry collection, Annoying
Diabetic Bitch, one has to understand its genesis. In the book’s
postscript, Mesmer describes her process of composition, dubbed “Flarf”
by her poet-friend Gary Sullivan:
[A] handful of poets with full-time jobs and little time to write were
entering outrageous and/or inappropriate word combinations into the
Google search engine and making poems out of the results, then emailing
them around to each other. Lines from the emailed poems could then be
reworked. . . and sent around again for further recombining.
The reader may notice that the Flarf method resembles the writing games
— like collage, exquisite corpse, and automatic writing —
promoted by the surrealist writer and propagandist André Breton.
Such processes are intended to bypass rational, purposeful thinking
and tap into the subconscious, where a more authentic truth is believed
to reside. In less-practiced hands than Mesmer’s, Flarf-derived
poems could easily lapse into nonsense. The particular genius of this
book lies in how Mesmer draws on the universal Id that is the Internet
and creates poems with strong speakers baring their deepest thoughts
and desires.
Echoing the Web’s collective fascination with celebrity, movie
stars and pop idols appear regularly in Mesmer’s work. The reader
is treated, for example, to an extended meditation on actor Jake Gyllenhaal
walking his dog, together with poems containing references to cultural
icons like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lopez, Marilyn Manson, Jimi Hendrix,
Paris Hilton, and Harry Whittington, the man Dick Cheney accidentally
shot while hunting quail.
“Atomic Bitch Wax” envisions a conversation between Mary
Kate and Ashley Olsen while they sit in New York’s Washington
Square Park:
MARY KATE: I love the 50 daily effects of white privilege. Native Americans
don’t bitch about how the Olsen Twins raped and pillaged their
people.
ASHLEY: No, they love forced feminization!
Some of the most arresting poems in Annoying Diabetic Bitch
expose the secrets of ordinary ”fucktards” and “asshats.”
The speaker of “My Insecurities” confesses:
I’ve really put Jesus through some things.
But when I think about how great Jesus was,
and still is,
how he knows me and can deal with it,
I start feeling sure about my equipment.
God’s grace took
all my insecurities
away!
The Flarf method hardly results in good poetry all of the time, but
at least eighty percent of Annoying Diabetic Bitch is quite
solid, boasting a higher batting average than many books written using
more orthodox techniques. Mesmer’s book is lewd, crude, politically
incorrect — and hilarious. It’s also the freshest poetry
collection many readers will have seen in a long time.
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