Postmodernism
Our Vocab Word o'th' Week names an artistic movement that we're still in the middle of. Unless we're post-Post. I end up explaining it in every single college course I teach, regardless of topic.
My Definition of Postmodernism Â
Postmodernism is the RenFaire of literature.
                              Jenn Zuko, Trident Café, 1/26/00
(an epigraph)
(a self-reference)
(a pop culture reference)
~
any rules that came before break them dont use punctuation proper grammar or any grammar at all talk about violence and about drugs and refer to yourself over and over (she said grinning at her reflection in the monitor even though there wasnt one) erase all genres and mix your media chop up your poetic lines so theyre the size of thirtysecond tiktoks anachronism irony smart violence like quentin tarantino dislikable characters like david mamet hip hop slam piracy genre eaters the genre mixers all the gender pronouns remix redux is this a really bad prose poem a fucked up fragmented informal essay or a bernadette mayer stream o consciousness beatnik thing man cyber punk email speak texting no that comes next (ing) a conflict between real and unreal at the renaissance festival people come in costumes that range anywhere from fantasy greek times to the seventeen hundreds needless to say the eras I just listed are not at all in the renaissance and the scary thing is that most people don’t know theyre doing anything inaccurate o and of course digital internet cannibalism building a birds nest not to mention cut the pauses or add more
pauses where it probably doesnt make much sense like pinter see I’m alluding again see I’m self-referencing again see
the short short short short short flash fiction and the four    hour    movie are what people want these days write your poem using street signs or lines from other peoples poetry acid jazz there was a joke in the onion about a hip hop artist that sampled the entire song billie jean by michael jackson but instead of altering it and using bits of it to back up his rhymes he just sampled the whole thing completely and rereleased it as his own song called da kidd (is not my son)
build up to a punchline and then give none.
~
(a tilde)
(not Swinton)
(a pop-culture reference)
(not a conclusion)
(an ad)
