Postmodernism
Quick answer: Postmodernism in poetry means play, collage, irony and distrust of grand narratives. A clear guide to the term, its poets and how to use its techniques.
Postmodernism is the broad cultural mood after 1945 that treats meaning as provisional, mixes high and low registers freely, and prefers play, collage and self-reference to the modernist dream of one great unified work. In poetry it shows up as irony about the poem's own authority, borrowed and found language, and a cheerful refusal to keep art separate from advertising jingles, gossip and instruction manuals.
Fair warning: this is one of the most contested terms in criticism, and scholars disagree about where modernism ends and postmodernism begins. For a working poet the debates matter less than the toolkit. If you have ever written a poem that interrupts itself, quotes a shampoo bottle, or admits it is a poem, you have already been writing under its sign.
Where the Term Comes From
The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard defined the postmodern condition as incredulity toward grand narratives: the big explanatory stories about progress, history and truth. In American poetry the shift is usually traced through the 1950s and 60s, when the New York School's chatty surfaces, the chance operations of John Cage's circle, and later the Language poets all questioned the idea of the poem as a well-wrought, self-contained urn.
John Ashbery is the poet most often called postmodern: his poems drift among registers and never quite settle on a paraphrasable meaning, yet they feel true to how a mind actually moves through a day of adverts, memories and weather.
The Postmodern Toolkit
Expect pastiche, the affectionate imitation of existing styles; found language, lifted from menus, forms and overheard talk; self-reference, where the poem comments on its own making; and register collision, a hymn cadence crashing into slang. An invented example of that collision: 'O gentle reader, the offer ends Friday; / bring your grief and a valid photo ID.'
The point is not randomness. Each device asks the same serious question in a comic voice: who authorised this language, and what happens if nobody did?
Using It Without Losing the Reader
Irony is seasoning, not a meal. The postmodern poems that last, Ashbery's included, keep genuine feeling under the play, so the reader is teased and moved at once. A practical rule: for every gesture that breaks the spell, give the reader one image or cadence that restores it. Poems that only wink exhaust their welcome in about six lines.
What poets can take from this
- Collect found language for a week, receipts, signage, spam, and build a poem from the best scraps.
- Let the poem change register at least once: formal to slangy, or liturgical to bureaucratic.
- If the poem refers to itself, do it once and make it count.
- Keep one sincere image untouched by irony; it becomes the poem's anchor.
- Read John Ashbery's shorter poems to watch drift and feeling coexist.
Try it yourself
Write a poem in the form of an official document, a warranty, a permission slip, a terms-of-service clause, that slowly reveals a real private grief. Keep the bureaucratic voice to the end.
Questions
What is the difference between Modernism and Postmodernism?
Modernism broke old forms but still believed the artwork could redeem the fragments into a new order. Postmodernism doubts the redemption: it plays among fragments without expecting a whole. In practice the border is blurry, and many poets straddle it.
Is postmodern poetry just irony and jokes?
No. Play is the surface method, but the enduring work uses play to reach genuine feeling and to question who controls language. A postmodern poem with no emotional stake underneath is simply a sketch.
Which poets are considered postmodern?
Common answers include John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, John Cage as an influence, and the Language poets such as Lyn Hejinian. The label is applied loosely, and some of these writers resisted it.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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