Poetry WTF?!

REMIX POETRY Remix poetry is the literary equivalent of Youtube remix videos. We take a famous poem or two, throw a few catchphrases into the mix, and out comes Dr. Seuss sounding like Shakespeare. Hurrah! It is also a form of cut-up writing, as practiced by William S. Burroughs. Phrases from one work are combined with utterances from the other to produce startling new wordage. There are different types of remix poetry, some retaining a stricter adherence to the original forms of the source material than others. For instance, Ozymandias by Shakespeare is a sonnet that remains faithful to the positioning of phrases in the original texts. On the other hand, War on Terror by William Shakespeare is essentially Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43 interspersed with catchphrases from America’s War on Terror. The form is therefore very flexible. As a rule, the resulting texts contain no new phrases or words not found in the originals. SCULPTURE POEMS Sculpture poems view an existing text, usually a famous poem, as a block of bronze at which to chip away and create a new work of art. In other words, sculpture poetry is created through subtraction. Sculpture poems are therefore also related to blackout poems, but with two important differences. The first is that sculpture poems tend to use poetry, rather than newspaper reportage, as raw material. The second is that the raw material is not necessarily a physical artifact, such as a printed newspaper or magazine. When the source material is digital text, we may say that sculpting results in digital whiteout. Sculpture poetry’s only rule is that nothing should be added. Only the raw material should be used.