CONTACT WITH POETS

designers who strive for success should prepare themselves for
the challenges of doing creative work in the middle of an endless,
polyglot failure party.
That “endless, polyglot failure party” (which ominously describes
many of the literary salons and poetic endeavours happening today)
becomes weirdly overpopulated with the further introduction of a
choir of “ben’s friends” and “ben’s friend’s friends” each of them listing
their favourite films, their online biographies, their “five things other
should know about [them].”
As a coda to the text, Steve Zultanski has “followed” Robert
Fitterman through information provided by Fitterman’s own family.
Listed are his favourite colognes, a list of his ex-girlfriends, information
on his parents and brother, dedications and inscriptions Fitterman wrote
in books given as gifts, his pet’s veterinarian report and mundane notes
left to his wife, poet Kim Rosenfield. Zultanski also interviews
Fitterman’s daughter Coco (who provides a screenshot of Fitterman’s
computer desktop).
What dates Acconci’s “Following Piece” as a cultural antique is
its dependence on physical space. On the net we have online profiles that
we have long since abandoned and “friends” we’ve never interacted with.
Acconci’s transcription of a single follower in a single social space has
been superceded now that Facebook has made us each the cult leader of
our own band of followers—with “friends” who follow our movements
and respond to every flickering change in our “relationship status” in a
single social space. Fitterman gathers the diverse portraits of a single digital
everyman, Ben Kessler, and presents to us a digital Willy Loman.
now we are friends Ben Kesslers us all. Fitterman exposes the digital
flatness of the language of our friendships, our relationships, our job and
hobbies, our passions and interests. The details of our lives, as mundane
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