Short attention span is the new avant-garde. Everyone complains that we can no longer intake huge chunks of text. I find that a reason to celebrate. It's something that has deep roots in modernism, stretching from the Futurists' use of typography to Pound's use of ideograms to concrete poetry. David Markson feels particularly relevant now. Twitter is the revenge of modernism.
Kenneth GoldsmithHow fortunate we are to exist in the moneyless economy of poetry! When you take money out of the equation, anything goes and nobody cares. It's truly free.
Kenneth GoldsmithAnd I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed become profoundly more intriguing as a cultural artifact itself. What we've experienced is an inversion of consumption, one in which we've come to prefer the acts of acquisition over that which we are acquiring, the bottles over the wine.
Kenneth GoldsmithThe best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesnโt need to be read. You donโt have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you donโt even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Hereโs every word I spoke for a week. Hereโs a yearโs worth of weather reports... and without ever having to read these things, you understand them.
Kenneth GoldsmithI don't have a readership, I have a thinkership. I guess this is why what I do is called "conceptual writing." The idea is much more important than the product.
Kenneth Goldsmith