/lit/ - Literature

Bump, I too am interested.

instead of passions and rainbows and death, they talk about peanut butter and ducks

>>1907672
Seems quite biased. Bumping with a contemporary poem, though it may not be postmodern. Pic related.

The Shout, by Simon Armitage

We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face

I don’t remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

He called from over the park—I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,

from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell’s Farm—
I lifted an arm.

He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.

Boy with the name and face I don’t remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.

Postmodern poetry has the same concerns as postmodern anything - the questions of ontology and identity, the suspicion of meta-narrative, and the desire to explore the concept of identity and truth, and the possibility that these things may not even exist.

I think the best examplar is probably John Berryman - confusing narrators, epic themes subverted into minor keys, multiple identities for the same person, a fear of meaning, and a healthy dose of pop-culture, obsolete music hall and general science-fiction japery on at least one occasion. This is the last poem in the dirst volume of the Dream Songs:

Dream Song 77


Seedy Henry rose up shy in de world
& shaved & swung his barbells, duded Henry up
and p.a.'d poor thousands of persons on topics of grand
moment to Henry, ah to those less & none.
Wif a book of his in either hand
he is stript down to move on.

—Come away, Mr. Bones.

—Henry is tired of the winter,
& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national
mind, & Spring (in the city so called).
Henry likes Fall.
Hé would be prepared to líve in a world of Fáll
for ever, impenitent Henry.
But the snows and summers grieve & dream;

thése fierce & airy occupations, and love,
raved away so many of Henry's years
it is a wonder that, with in each hand
one of his own mad books and all,
ancient fires for eyes, his head full
& his heart full, he's making ready to move on.

>>1907818
That was enlightening, thanks for that. Plus, you introduced me to a new poet.

>>1907843

I hope you like him - I think he's one of the great writers of the 20th c. Just for shits and gigs, here's another one: SUDDENLY SCI-FI

Dream Song 50

In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.

This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
—Mr Bones, your troubles give me vertigo,
& backache. Somehow, when I make your scene,
I cave to feel as if

de roses of dawns & pearls of dusks, made up
by some ol' writer-man, got right forgot
& the greennesses of ours.
Springwater grow so thick it gonna clot
and the pleasing ladies cease. I figure, yup,
you is bad powers.

>>1907862
I do quite like that. I just wishlisted Dream Songs in fact. Thanks for introducing me.

>>1907862
>>1907818

I love the way there's always, or almost always, a rhyme scheme, but Berryman makes you work for it, he hides it away, and subtly drapes it and then you realise, hey, this motherfucker is TIGHT.