More about the anthology

Some thoughtful reflection on the fat new joke/prank/thought-provoking poetry anthology that appeared on the net this morning. Literary pranks can be fun, after all.

Roland Barthes might be found chuckling in his grave this morning at all of the poet egos lamenting, laughing over, or wringing their hands about a kind of anthology that appeared on the web this morning (read the irate comments already piling up here). Happily, it appears on a blog called, “For Godot,” which is certainly a play on Beckett’s existential play, “Waiting for Godot.” We’ve waited long enough, and now we’ve decided to start making something “for Godot” since we’re still here, waiting. Might as well do something with all of this waiting, this huge internet, this number of poems in the world. This something fucks with the authority of authorship, assigning poems to published poets that they did not write. My poem, which is not a product of my brain, but is “my” poem now, like it or not, is called, “A broad man” (page 1663); it seems to have actually been written by someone, not computer-generated. On the other hand, poet, Ana Bozicevic, read “her” poem and suspects otherwise; she believes they are computer-generated.