M H Frost

Post Postmodern Angst Disorder M H Frost

What comes after Postmodernism? Will poetry, like pop culture, slip ever deeper into the abyss of pseudomodernism? Will it be an aesthetic of virtual games, virtual communications, virtual dating and virtual reality: a world of personas, not persons? Or will the aesthetic of poetry rise to the challenge of metamodernism? Will it be an aesthetic of oscillation between and beyond modernism and postmodernism: "between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons" (Metamodernist Manifesto)? In this debut volume of poems, the poet M. H. Frost attempts to embody the search beyond postmodernism. He seems to be the mythical Theseus in the title poem, "Post Postmodern Angst Disorder," still suffering the trauma of the postmodernist labyrinth of meaninglessness. In his search for a new way to interact with the world after the labyrinth, he is warned by his Jungian psychologist guide that there is no pill, only the process. These poems are a witness to the process. They are one poet's experiences on the mythical journey out of postmodernism.