This book examines Uncreative Writing-the catch-all term to describe Neo-Conceptualism Flarf
and related avant-garde movements in contemporary North American poetry-against a decade of
controversy. David Kaufman analyzes texts by Kenneth Goldsmith Vanessa Place Robert Fitterman
Ara Shirinyan Craig Dworkin Dan Farrell and Katie Degentesh to demonstrate that Uncreative
Writing is not a revolutionary break from lyric tradition as its proponents claim. Nor is it a
racist reactionary capitulation to neo-liberalism as its detractors argue. Rather this
monograph shows that Uncreative Writing's real innovations and weaknesses become clearest when
read in the context of the very lyric that it claims to have left behind.
