Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The
kids at a touch table: we’re delighted—
disposability, fluidity—
that these words aren’t meant for forever.
Gleaned from poems posted by other poets:
pleasure.
How much did you say that paragraph weighed?

Whitney approached me to put together
well. Now you get a sense of what the man
glued to a page, but tomorrow they could
meme. Fusing the avant-garde impulses
to roll in it, to get our hands dirty—
your guilty pleasure.
How much did you say that paragraph weighed?

Conceptual writing obstinately:
fraud, theft, and falsification as its
ethos. Language as material,
as something to be shoveled into a
ability—machinistic repetition,
paragraph-weighed.
How much did you say that paragraph weighed?

Confession, “I really do not know that
economics of poetry create
process as its methodologies, and
to be discarded and recycled once
celebrates this circumstance.”
A shocking amount of beauty and
how much did you say that paragraph weighed?

Author’s Process: If you research Conceptual Poetry, one name is frequently repeated — Kenneth Goldsmith. He in turn frequently repeats the same words to describe said poetic movement. In fact, he’s done it multiple times in various situations for the past three years. Of this reused description, one line resonates most with readers: “How much did you say that paragraph weighed?” I searched for that phrase in its multiple applications in his introductions and interviews, and in the four referenced above I cut and pasted his words by lines (based on a system of collecting the first line, line one-quarter into the document, two middle lines, line from three-quarters into the document, and last line), then edited each to consecutive ten-syllable segments (though the last lines were not always ten and I edited some punctuation). I then finished each stanza with that wonderful phrase that he’s used time and time again. The result is the poem above. Enjoy, Kenneth Goldsmith.