The 21st Century Poem

Most of us have the spam filters on our email inboxes placed at its highest possible setting, forbidding all but the sneakiest sales pitches for “viag_ra” and the latest weight loss scam. We would digest the fact that a growing number of the world’s population actually reads and enjoys their spam in a highly dubious manner. Yet, the fact remains: There are people who anticipate the arrival of their spam so much so that email checking is the first activity of their morning routine – even before coffee making.
These spam-lovers are not crazy. In fact, a bunch of totally boss people, including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, make spam an integral part of their lives. They create poetry from the random, gibberish-like sentences at the end of the emails, which are sometimes recognizable fragments of famous works of literature, and sometimes complete nonsense. Depending on how the poet likes to “treat” his/her spam, the poems can be derived from the phrases of a number of different emails, or built entirely on one phrase from a single email. More often then not, the poet will put his mark on the poetry by adding and subtracting words and including verb tenses and grammatical sense. The finished product looks similar to this “spam poem” pilfered from www.poemsmadefromspam.blogspot.com:

Take what your water long.
Before me picture number life study thing.
Best hard will high.
We land few them got land.

Under animals play this than a.
Let be too above take her.
With five paper tell.

Will father far life told second better.
Into world light today large a word night.
In do can sound back life again.

- Marisela Marisela

According to most spam poets, the “Spam Lit” movement is rooted in the experimental literature of William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch, Junkie), which itself originated from the cut-up techniques of Brion Gysin. This technique, which involves cutting up pages of comprehensible writing and rearranging them to create new sentences and ideas, was used for lyric composition by none other than David Bowie and Kurt Cobain.
Gysin’s writing philosophy is a part of the movement’s motivation. He believed that writing should have the same freedom as abstract art, which was receiving high critical acclaim in the 60s, and which was able to mix and match separate images to create one beautiful image.
Anti-capitalism is another driving force of the Spam Lit movement. Poets feel that they are fighting the influences of capitalism by making art out of what was originally intended to be used for money making purposes. Also, they are making art without spending money on any supplies, besides maybe a computer, which everyone has now-a-days anyway.
Although Spam Lit is tied to the highly regarded works of Gysin and Burroughs, it fails to be recognized by academia, largely remaining a literary contribution of the indie community. For other reasons that basically melt down to snobbery and the failure to acknowledge change, academic circles claim that spam poetry is a passing novelty – that it will fade as spam filters fortify.
Their argument may ring true. Obviously spam filters do, and will continue to have an impact on spam poetry. But it is more than just an art form. Spam poetry is a modern use of language – a byproduct of the Internet, a force which cannot be underestimated, as it permeates the lives of 21st century citizens.