So. Over at Jacket 29, I found a shrewd little essay by Dan Hoy, thanks to Kasey's link. I'll let the title speak for itself: "The Virtual Dependency of the Post-Avant and the Problematics of Flarf: What Happens when Poets Spend Too Much Time Fucking Around on the Internet."* I'm not quite ready to define the essay's rhetorical agenda as materialist line-towing, probably because Hoy makes some very good points. Although I found Hoy's argument both provocative and informed, the assumptions that underscore his criticisms are themselves problematic. A full response is in process.