Conceptual Introductions

Conceptual literature confronts the self concscious, self assertive values of lyricism by offering alternatives to this normative condition of writing. Alternatives inspired in part by the procedural artwork of American conceptual artists from the 1960s.

The following poem is a transcription of YouTubes closed caption feature, providing an ersatz simulacra of the inspiration for this work by the same title, by Christian Bök. The idea was to automate the function of creativity in writing this poem, allowing the lyrical nature of this poem to adapt and reform into a new one, much like the concept for the "original" poem itself.

Christian Bök has spent more than ten years writing what promises to be the first example of 'living poetry.'

After successfully demonstrating his concept in a colony of E. coli, Bök is on the verge of enciphering a beautiful, anomalous poem into the genome of an unkillable bacterium (Deinococcus radiodurans), which can, in turn, "read" his text, responding to it by manufacturing a viable, benign protein, whose sequence of amino acids enciphers yet another poem.

The engineered organism might conceivably serve as a post-apocalyptic archive, capable of outlasting our civilization.

I have spent less than an hour simulating what is essentially the first example of 'Cyborganismic poetry', and if the poem is itself is conceptual, then the following poem can quite easily be argued to be just as durable as the unkillable bacterium.

Here is a link to the reading of The Late Heavy Bombardment by Christian Bök, as read by Christian Bök.

The Late Heavy Bombardment

Welcome rate and reader, today he DNA on above the earth.

When Ramadan’s ruled there cobalt bombs into your Malton were ruled a basalt and bronze.
When mighty golem Swan do from orbit to drive their Gleaves %uh Viron into your black mesas, only to be in gold by the blast waves.
When meteors bill earth word in droves, each one a good time on warhead on blaze.
When super volcanoes erupted lamb Obama’s after each hammer blow from these endless blitzes.
I love arrow lights and firebombs.
When bolide some brimstone collided then exploded into a bladed cascades, when tsunami usable all marine down like napalm betrayal, knowing the subcontinent’s.
When millions of Molotov cocktails shattered all at once upon that cobblestones of hell.
When Trojans beserk with reach stormed over the brink of your RBS, vowing to claw your face from the skull love the moon.

In what dire seed must these onslaugths have scattered like shrapnel across your cremated badlands, what prix on what virus, what breed of spore must emerge like a spear point or a sword blade from these early Albans of out spitz, each cyanide bonfire burning in reverse, spitting fourth up fitful embryo, cloned from the smoke and the dross. What orchid must have bloomed among the flamethrowers in the furnace.
What Dragon must have hatched from the burnt teeth buried in these ashes, must the universe be so pitiless as to give a late all its offspring at birth.

Even now the astronauts have marshalled their forces to March, resolute across the Killzone up your godforsaken crematorium, even now they forge ahead onward through win ball and wildfire, on aware that far away are doomsayers, murmers prayers against them from a fiendish grim long are.

What great combat has yet to plummet from the heavens like a rocket engine, dousing its jets during splashdown in your own versions of nitro glycerin. What thunderclap has yet to hold the advent of this plowshares which can bowl does a mountain into rubble up on impact.
What match heads when scraped against your atmosphere can ignite its oxygen, turning the sky into a blazing typhoon.

Only a demigod like 9994 to %uh pappas can offer you this up apocalypse by being the Juggernaut that smashes through with a massive bowl war cup your bedrock.

Well we just lawyers like 2101 Tantalus or 4179 to talk to us can erase all earthlings with the ease up suicide bombers at our marketplace. Can a nor’easter in its shell survived the inferno up free fall from outerspace? Cannot crocus thrive in soil made from polarized meteorites. All hail hail bop, and every other super bomb yet to detonates.

What great dying must the earth percy in the barren mirror of the mood? In what 8, what fury, what Muse must gaze upon the grim basam grief reflected in your silver shield, a faceplate, a bulletproof glass marred by bullet wounds.
What cinders aflame disintegrate in your gracie’s of nectar, a beber of crisis.
What shell shock must reach you when you stumble aghast upon the charred remains of of forest at Tung us gonna its evergreens top old and blasted, all of them long asunder like match sticks.
What for gotten holocaust at three to Fort, must you your turn to recreate whenever you vaporize and a toll.

Even now your battalions of astronauts stride across green plains, uptrend a tight, to storm the walls of Castle Bravo and Castle Romeo.
Even now Niel Armstrong returns like Orpheus to the airlock, his spacesuit reeking of gunpowder and bird Steele.

What americans sorcerer must 88 his spy plane by the stray light %uh me dear storms, the flak from the Dracaena IDs or the score, pierdes raining down like glitter dust.
A palm, the desert during on nocturnal firefight.
What size blades must the biking sports from the wreckage of an asteroid, recovered from Cape York?
What Archangel must the marchers placate when they kiss that Blackstone about combat mecca during the Hajj?
What sunburst must erupt like crack at Olaf over the Arctic Circle, when the higher power: love your payload, exceeds by tenfold all that dynamite exploded during WWII.

Even now the president up the United States sits alone at night, dreading the grim how we’re when he must open the memo from years aid, only to read up on the page, the single phrase; Pinnacle new clash, the newsflash that chronicles the on the side up the world.