Pulling words out of a hat: "Tristan Tzara said: 'Poetry is for everyone.' And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: 'Poetry is for everyone.'"

only is the technique magical (in that it reveals new, unexpected meanings) but it's also relentlessly democratic. Burroughs describes Tzara being "expelled" from the Surrealist movement by Andre Breton after a rally in the 1920s where Tzara suggested creating a poem by two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different - cutting up political speeches is an interesting exercise - in any case you will find that it says some- thing and something quite definite."

Not cut down the middle and across the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section technique is related to Cubism, in that it results in a multi-perspectival, not-quite-abstract revision of a recognizable object. But Burroughs himself relates it to collage

"The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now between ideas in the same passage. The end result is very similar to surrealist games and to magical divinations -- with the interpreting mind imposing a new order on a seemingly chaotic yet related string of symbols (in this case, words). The The "cut-up" technique was invented by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin as a way of creating meaning or discovering meaning by removing words from their linear order and reordering them randomly. This allows the subconscious to find new, unexpected connections

Text processing courtesy of the Grazulis Online Cut-Up Machine.

More on the history of cut ups.

And a passel of links about cut ups and cut up generators.