Your Country Is Great: Afghanistan-Guyana

by Ara Shirinyan

Reading travel literature not to mention postcards or emails from your friends will never be the same after reading Ara Shirinyan s hilarious and sardonic Your Country Is Great; Afghanistan-Guyana. Proceeding alphabetically and hence giving equal time to nations as diverse as Belarus and Belgium, Cameroon and Canada, and splicing found text to produce capsule descriptions of one great place to visit after another, Shirinyan exposes the fault lines of contemporary geopolitics with much wit and aplomb. In the end, maybe staying home and reading Shirinyan - is what s really GREAT. -Marjorie Perloff

Ara Shirinyan gives us an early glimpse at the deadening effects of globalization on language. Collapsing the space between the 'real world' and the World Wide Web, this book calls into question: What is local? What is national? What is multicultural? Instead of accepting current notions of language as a medium of differentiation, Shirinyan persuasively demonstrates its leveling quality, demolishing meaning into a puddle of platitudes. In a time when everything is great, yet nothing is great, you can almost hear Andy Warhol the king of blandness and neutrality saying, Gee, this book is great. -Kenneth Goldsmith

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Zack]

This book was hilarious!

[Nicole]

Where the book is successful is in the idea, poems of countries beginning with the letter A and ending with the letter G that have been googled, and it is through that google search that the poem of the country has been created by editing and splicing. The idea is interesting, here Shirinyan uses Google, an American or Western search base to reveal how the masses perceive a country to be. Some poems are shorter or blank because of what Google has found in the search which shows how people see that place, and some countries have an abundance of information that may be irrelevant or very commercial. i think the book says more about the ideas that people have of a certain place, then about the place itself, which works. Where it doesn't work, redundancy, and over abundance of it, which could work for the specific poem if the point is to exploit those ideas, however once you've gone through all countries with A, B, and C, you begin to expect it and it no longer is pushing this idea of how people or the west sees other places but it begins to be annoying. Some poems are stronger than others, and there are some good lines or stanzas, however overall when you get to countries that begin with D, you are no longer interested. And i think looking at it, in the mass sense shows the impact but it doesn't make me want to finish the book. It's better when you look at what the google search is saying in relation to that country, looking at it one at a time is much stronger, however as a whole it doesn't do much. The ones that are stronger are the ones that show the authors control, unfortunately not many of them do. I do have one favorite poem, but that's pretty much about it.
Maybe if there was one book of countries that begin with A, and another for B and so on, because then while the reader will know or understand what is being done you can look at the pieces more closely but when it is countries that begin with A all the way through G, you realize it is a lot of countries to get through, that may not be as interesting.

It's a good idea, I just wish he put himself into it as well.

[Heather]

This little poetry collection is a unique animal. It was created using an experimental form of the art called "Flarf." The basic idea is behind "flarf" is creating poetry entirely from "found" language--i.e., compiling the language you "find" in the world around you, and arranging it in ways that create a poem with some sort of message. Flarf can be created using the words on street signs, billboards, want ads in the newspaper--just about anything. By way of example: I once created the following flarf poem entirely from a poster about warning signs of suicide and a "Stop" sign at San Diego State:
"Know the signs of suicide
Stop.
Suicide stop.
Stop suicide.
Signs stop suicide."

That's more or less the idea.

This particular collection is made up of poems created from lines found during internet searches. The writer (creator?) of the work et down an alphabetical list of the recognized sovereign nations of the world and typed the phrase (Name of country)is great into a google search. Then, he used phrases he found in the search results to create a poem. He chose to leave the poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling from the search results in tact, but managed to put the lines from the searches together into (mostly) coherent single poems. Awareness of his method is essential to getting something out of this work, I think. If you're like me, and you aren't aware that the errors are a reflection of the illiteracy of the internet, you will want to strangle the poet by the halfway point in the collection. Grammar-Nazi annoyances aside, however, the collection is a fascinating experiment in a very 21st century approach to creating poetry.

[Wendy Trevino]

(p 110-111)

GERMANY IS GREAT

Germany is great.
Good food, better beer, healthy atmos,
beautiful scenery, culture, entertainment, history
Go there if possible.

This is a stereotype that is true--
the beer in Germany is great.
Even the cheap stuff tastes better than
a lot of the swill you get
in the States.

It has been said that moving to Germany
is great for beer drinkers,
history buffs and the insatiably
curious.

Germany is great if you like trains

Germany is great!
The people, the beer,
the places,
transport
Sure I will visit again!

Yes, Germany is great !
Did you like the 'bratwurst' ?
I find it great that we
( English/Brits )
are finally finding out
that Germany is great

They treat you like you are one of their own.
All the food is beautiful and the landscape
is even better!
Germany is great!

The Catholic Church in Germany
is great in its social activities:
during their 'ad Limina' visits,
bishops
largely from Africa--
tell me with gratitude

The realistic map, the industry and resources,
the military units, the technologies and
the sheer thrill of invading
the Soviet Union as Germany is great.

In contrast,
the genetic & cultural difference
between China and Germany
is great

The atmosphere in Germany is great
and it's just like Africa here--
there is beautiful sunshine and it's
absolutely magnificent

[Chad]

Systematically feeling out the boundaries of the internet by exploring the investment in and the capitalistic fantasies created around every recognized country in the world, this first in a series of two books by Ara Shirinyan is engaging, embarrassing, diagnostic, funny, and frightful in equal shares. You will never think of travel quite the same way again.

[Laura]

"Finland is great because / Finland is great." One of the "great" collage texts, this recent futurepoem release celebrates the flat and seductive language of a particular sort of text-for-tourists: the inside / outside speech of distanced desire...

[Joseph]

If you read one book of poetry this weekend, make it this one.

[Joe]

'pataphysics = flarf?

Illuminates the form of a google search:

France is great?
Why is the myth
important?
The answer is a mix of
nostalgia, culture, and economic
self-interest(106)

[Erin]

Inventive - I think its always fascinating what one can do playing with common verbage on the internet.

[Samantha Lopez]

ENGL 403