Critical Response to The Cut-Up Method

The concept of the Cut-Up Method in creating poetry is interesting. When a poem is derived out of an existing document some of the terms in the document might relate to each other and others might not. However the point is that this new work has the potential to be an exceptionally good poem. It is interesting as to how the words will end up being arranged in the new work and ultimately have meaning as a poem. Also, since they are not completely random words thrown together that don’t correlate with each other on the whole, rather a mixture of words in which some correlate and others don’t, the poetic work has the potential to make more sense than not. I think it would be really interesting to see an initially poor document turn into something phenomenal.

Burroughs’s claim that all writing is made up of cut-ups is neat to think about; everything originated from fragments of things we have heard or seen before. You only write what you know; you don’t write things you don’t know, it all comes from somewhere. And after you cut up an existing document and rearrange the phrases you get a completely different take on what each work is suggesting in its context. The new work might get the point across better than the initial document or it might not.

I appreciate this method of creating poetry, but I don’t think it works every time; it might take multiple attempts to produce something that is worth reading. Therefore, as a poet I don’t think it is the most efficient method to use every time. That being said there is always that chance of ending up with something brilliant. After all, some of the best works are created by experimentation or accident. As Burroughs puts it, you just have to “cut the words and see how they fall.” For me, I feel it is the luck of the draw or the luck of the cut for that matter.