07-31-2021, 07:34 AM
For me, the purpose of doing a cut-up is liberation. Not having to follow any rules, not having to make allowances for the reader. They are edited; what initially comes out is pure gibberish. So there is a huge amount of editing involved, but not editing for the reader's sake, but for the original texts' sake. I try to retain the feel of those originals while making something that can be read and is equally liberating for the reader.
I've done more than 300 of these over time but I'm still figuring it out. I haven't found an audience for them (except for myself) and it's unlikely I ever will. But I believe they are worth reading.
I can say, based on my experiments, that you really can't make a cut-up out of poems because you need the things you mention for a poem (form, rhythym etc.). It's strictly a prose medium. You might pull off a prose poem, but that's as close to poetry as you'll get.
The most famous practitioner of our time, William S. Burroughs, cut-up his own text. So first you get something logical, an obvious if outlandish narrative. Then you hit a cut-up of portions of that chapter and maybe chapters you have not read yet. Then back to a logical narrative. And then back to cut-up. And on and on. What I'm doing lacks those islands of narrative, which is most likely the problem I'm having finding an audience.
There is a writer who published entire novels that were completely made up of cut-ups (I think, based on what I've read about her work secondhand). Her name is Kathy Acker.
I've done more than 300 of these over time but I'm still figuring it out. I haven't found an audience for them (except for myself) and it's unlikely I ever will. But I believe they are worth reading.
I can say, based on my experiments, that you really can't make a cut-up out of poems because you need the things you mention for a poem (form, rhythym etc.). It's strictly a prose medium. You might pull off a prose poem, but that's as close to poetry as you'll get.
The most famous practitioner of our time, William S. Burroughs, cut-up his own text. So first you get something logical, an obvious if outlandish narrative. Then you hit a cut-up of portions of that chapter and maybe chapters you have not read yet. Then back to a logical narrative. And then back to cut-up. And on and on. What I'm doing lacks those islands of narrative, which is most likely the problem I'm having finding an audience.
There is a writer who published entire novels that were completely made up of cut-ups (I think, based on what I've read about her work secondhand). Her name is Kathy Acker.