Hi Alex, Cally asked me the same thing on FB, and I gave her these snippets. I wouldn't call these poems "postmodern," if by that you mean avant-garde Language poems in the style of John Ashbery. I consider Ashbery the "interior decorator" - the outside world doesn't exist in his poems. The poems in the Nov issue, however, have all kinds of new visions of the world - they definitely interact with a real world full of pain and trouble and beauty. I love poems that feel everything and look everywhere, like these, and still have a sharp Language-y edge.
in the earth a corpse snapped // God’s ropes
(Joudah)
One hour— One hour—
One hour.
(NEZHUKUMATATHIL)
A green and yellow planet,
A blue band, rung with stars.
(Higgins)
God drew back in a giant gust and blew life into the boy
and like a stranded fish, he shuddered, oceanless.
(Ahmed)
I have come this day to the bank of the Elbe
To write a few postcards
In a tearoom.
(May)
Then they sent us into another, and the iron door slammed,
bolted shut. Screaming, I pounded on it again and again. We truly
were lost, as last I understood....
(BORBÉLY)
and so one hesitates
to clamber up there
just to bomb a cow
with dung or bother
swallows from their
rafter cakes.
(Boss)
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