Inside poetry's factional camps, there's a lot of circling of the wagons going on. But outside, in the culture at large, an open horizon works like a magnet. Borders are crisscrossed. Subjectivity works by osmosis. Nothing stays fixed (or forgotten) for long. Everything is ripe for sampling. As Kraftwerk put it: "You can synthesize your existence. We created ourselves synthetically. I suppose you might call it 'ersatz,' but the real meaning of the word synthetic is 'putting together,' which is all we are doing."
 
Track the cues. Follow the clues—in "debug mode." Rob Fitterman, in the years I've known him, living in New York City, has propelled himself along a line of adventure, from an earlier floating Objectivist precisionism through the circus banners of a chopped-up hurly-burly Americana and then, experimenting with a wider palette of devices and approaches, to a full-face engagement with the palimpsest sociability of city life—in Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon, 2000).
 
The pieces here are destined for another volume of the ongoing Metropolis project: "our story is one of content selection"—whether from Petrarch's Rome or Guiliani's Manhattan. And if they move beyond the anxiously personal—more like contemporary post-conceptual installation art or the copy-&-paste aesthetic of pop music—they also skirt the arbitrary, the formulaic, the auto-pilot button. They valorize themselves not so much by vernacular sampling (which is nothing new, even if it still scandalizes the clerisy) as by the rich and risky attentiveness of their prosodic choices. Relation is it.
—B.A.
 

PET
[from Metropolis 30: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]

 
1. Prime of Life
 
                       Sunrise Media Kit Mountain
Cleopatra Cruise Ship Center            memory burners
 
newcities committed to the bright path
      cafeteria approach,
protein folding, SupraLife, capital preservation
                                               gains EZAccess laserhaus
 
we have become the leader of the purification reagents
                            with state of the art robotic platforms
deeply discounted woodshed services
                                              wanting thorny bushes—
our favorite motivational speaker—with her blood
                                              :gone to the well

 

2. A Splendid Body
 
                        Speed stack,            thin's
                   virtual cheercard, coil
                                       corsets, pumped adornment
trappers, replacers, mineral
                                    toddy, total toddy, the great
                            splenic vessels, sectional
                                     liquid latex basket, Ultra Toddy
              spiritual microfiltration
thalamus nomads,       bright oxy
                                  tamale filling: some call it
                                   a magazine, a catalogue, we call it
a magalog! guggulbolic
             performance drink, core error:
                                            so you're replacing me

 

3. Good Health
 
Lose years (grapeseed oil horror stories
 
it's a go hot worry
determining cost pillar associated with job headaches
 
reverse policy discounts (cosmetic & scenery
 
(island insert)) getaway for your happy mind
 
in the next act, everything you do
has a purpose (cheap suit itch
 
these people seem happy enough
let's try the other test

 

4. Health Restored
 
Well come creamy, light gas pockets
                  you're trekking across a vast swamp teaming   
with gritty stuff followed by stingy stuff—lat pulldown
restored foreskins
 
Fast forward to the first of the year…
         debug mode, belly off farming subluxated cortisol
 
is not a friend, smoking dope restored my sight
 
I know a small HMO that welcomes HIV
           It's a paradise in danger, you're naked on the trial
It's a shakedown,
                            I'm a massive success story

 
5. Strength
 
I love your pain management system
myodynamic okie grips label syntax
caber turner payroll (star) garden invisible
practical knife throwing multi-everything
data model caught in someone else's body
Behold… the former things willl not be
remembered Olde Time Physical Culture
a shake-hands-with-your-uncle-Sam
personality indicator. Tone Max. We
capitalize the word TEAM because we love
your product little gypsy penny drop
supermotivating biblical nutrition schedule-
driven spinecare candlles our story is one
of content selection my sheep listen to my voice
 
 
6. Running Swiftly
 
    I needed a cute little fox image, hymnut
                        industry wrap-ups, bingo permit, frosty
olympic hoplit armor a lamb who goes uncomplaining
forth, do you get the feeling some folks think
                      fresh-start manuals means a big snowball
            approval re-engineering riverfront boost?
 
Raising the dust in the plain super-easily
                home-based triangle banks a big bet is on
                            the people, temporary foghog offices
we can make it happen, how to get paid for watching
                TV, local Hilltoppers in Slovak soft step
                                  either you're a walker or a runner
there's no such animal as a jogger.

 

7. A Good Mind
 
This is how discrimination feels
         this world needs to lay off individuals
Unless it turns itself into something which itself
         is not… words fail me: Mark, you ARE the man!
Science of mind mall, mind shop, mind in your area,
         mind does not cover Scotland, trigger supreme
The following success stories reflect a deep ecologist,
         futurist and corporate critic, dreamgiver
Lame-ass anarchy page helping you think your way
         to an excellent life. Emily's problem:
No changeable gods unless there were unchangeable
         return to the Institute Calendar (lunch included)
About this guide, it shatters lives, the mental charity
         Carmen's story: when will stuff arrive?