Post-modernism

[Wintermute]

Something I did for my English 4A class back in my freshman year at community college. The class seemed to like it, so I figured I'd share it with you guys.

I open my eyes
and breath air
left over from days ago.
My favorite invention
thinks it is too cold
and hums the theme
of its favorite song.

The timer goes off on the coffee machine
and my own dark face
smiles back at me
like an addict
from under the surface of the hot black drug
as I take it.

Now my goddamn stomach
wants its due attention
finding that I no longer have
the anesthesia of deep sleep
to prevent my intestinal tract
from transmitting this feeling of agony
that accompanies its ritual bath
in gastric acids.

I ignore it
and carefully read a newspaper
as if I actually believe in
the idea of honest journalism.
It tries to inform me
of a sale on toys
I never got to play with as a child,
and new medications
that will solve all my problems as an adult.

My short attention span
is not impressed.
So, I tear it up
and burn it;
a small victory
against rich corporate strangers
that want to take all my money away.

[Despanan]

How is it post-modern?

[Wintermute]

Speculate.

[Man In Room 5]

I speculate that you're misusing the word post-modern.

Anyone can write
in choppy little lines
about how shitty their life is
it doesn't have to
rhyme
as long as it's full of
some vague sense of existential angst
and shards of
shattered identity
throw in an occasional longer line like this one
and it will impress
people who are poorly grounded
in the Western literary tradition
I blame Sylvia Plath
it's like tennis without a net
in the rain

[Despanan]

I read your poem out loud, it's really not that bad.

I just don't think it meets the criteria to be post-modern.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

...unifying features often coincide with Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the "meta-narrative" and "little narrative," Jacques Derrida's concept of "play," and Jean Baudrillard's "simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest. This distrust of totalizing mechanisms extends even to the author; thus postmodern writers often celebrate chance over craft and employ metafiction to undermine the author's "univocal" control (the control of only one voice).

[Alan]

Eh... it's better than what most people post as 'poems' but as a fan of Derrida I feel offended.

[Wintermute]

I'll be honest here.

I was told to write a 'post-modern' poem for a creative writing class in college.

So I attempted to do so.

This is that poem that I wrote.

My teacher mentioned that he really liked it and he said nothing about it 'not being post-modern', so, I assumed by the absence of his correction, and the presence of an A+ on my paper, that it qualified as a post-modern poem - hence, the title of this thread.

If it's not post-modern, then it's not post-modern.

[Despanan]

Well clearly, your teacher didn't know what post-modernism is, or just didn't care.

I'd change the title.

[Wintermute]

It wont let me.

[Despanan]

I mean in the future. I assume that the title of this thread is the title of the poem.

[Wintermute]

Oh, no. The poem is just called "Fragments of Breakfast".

[sibyl vane.]

It's pretty good.