Preface

Way back in June 2008, I happened to Google the phrase the american dream is the human dream. Zero exact matches were returned—which at first struck me as odd. After all, it’s a common idea; and during that heady, politicized spring, it danced on many tongues. But of course, there are countless ways to say the things we say.

Two months later, in late August, I searched the phrase again. This time there were two matches:
 

The American Dream is the human dream of peace, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness.

The American Dream is the human dream intended for all, lets work together to allow other people to dream.

  

While it might be interesting to learn precisely when and why those seven words, in that order, entered cyberspace just when they did, I became curious about something else: the quiet but palpable sense of connection I felt when those two hits were returned.

We send a few words out into the world, and they return to us in the company of others. Usually we know what we are looking for, and have eyes for little else. I began to search a lot more, but differently, which led to this book.

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It can be moving, how few words we need to generate resonant meaning, how quickly the general becomes personal—and how universal the personal can be. At the time of writing, the following search phrases returned the indicated number of exact matches:
 

if

if only

if only we

if only we would

if only we would think

if only we would think carefully

if only we would think carefully about

4,410,000,000

59,300,000

3,280,000

524,000

19

1

0

That’s four billion to zero—from shapeless mass to meaningful ideal—in six words flat! Of the above phrases, if only we would think is most pertinent to this collection. At nineteen matches, things snap into a friendly dimension. It’s like reaching into a teeming sea of language, scooping up a handful and seeing what’s there. Always there are surprises. We have ideas of our own about each search phrase, our own ways of completing the thought it begins; other people have other ways, contradicting as well as underscoring ours. Together, the results compose a kind of poetry of crowds, in which we can see a little of the world and a little of ourselves at the same time.

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Here are the rules I followed when searching and editing the results:
 

• The search phrases were entered inside quotation marks, in order to generate only exact matches.

• The order in which the results appear is the exact order in which they appeared when the matches were returned.

• In cases where the searched phrase yielded duplicate returns, the repetitions have either been reduced to one appearance, or all have been included.

  

The pieces have been selected for a variety of reasons. Some are simple inventories, diverse if partial. Perhaps only a few succeed as poems. All seem most alive when read out loud, evoking mantras, litanies, theater. Throughout, there is an absence of conclusiveness—the suppression of sense exactly where one most expects to find it. While this may irk some readers, I hope it will titillate others, and even deliver a form of cognitive relief. For those of us who live day to day admid strident polemical crossfire, slowing down the rate of incoming certitude can be both tonic and provocative. Freed from their original matrices, facets of meaning flash and feint, the bulk of their intent submerged; and the key phrases tease out fresh completions in the mind.

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While assembling this collection, I became aware of other people already doing similar things. In addition to the general bounty of works of quilted chance—from the Surrealists’ “exquisite corpses” to tomorrow’s virtual mashups—interested readers might enjoy investigating the vibrant world of Flarf (search-result poetry for which the present volume is mere primer) and the beautiful WE FEEL FINE website and book.

Lawrence Krauser
     
   
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