My husband suffered from delusions for a few days but they made him very happy.I wonder if our temperament and way of life can influence us  should we ever get delusions?
He was very frail.I was in the kitchen and he came to me and said
It’s so wonderful  being with you.
This was not something he said very often!
I replied, but you are with me always
No, he said,I am usually with Katherine
I realised then he was seeing his mother.
Since he looked so happy I didn’t  contradict him despite one of his close friends telling me I should.I have known people with odd minds and I am ok with it.
The only problem was that he began to ask questions

Where is Dad?
Why have you not remarried [ looking at me with glowing affection and admiration
Where did you go for your honeymoon?
Why did your boss have a wooden leg [I worked out it must   have been WW1
Anyway for about 3 days he remained like this until the antibiotics worked
I was glad to know how much  he had loved his mother.And if he was happy why should I argue?He might  have suffered distress and was already very ill

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mercuria

Mary sat in her bijou but well-designed blue kitchen reading email on her Windows 13 laptop.She was feeling quite weak after a bout of pneumonia   and cystitis despite having Dave the paramedic visit  every day with chicken  soup
She found a new email from her old friend who has been away
I hate you, so much, Mary, it began ominously as love and hate are closely linked
I wonder if it is something I have done, Mary thought, or is it my essential self he hates and why now after all these years?
You are always explaining things to me as if I am  dumb
Oh, dear, Mary thought.The perils of being a keen mathematician and   also a foolish woman are many
I have got  more and more annoyed with you especially since you threw that brick through my Windows.I am not coming  tonight to be with you.You can get stuffed you crackling font.And I shall  never forgive you as I never do forgive anyone even if I made a mistake.I can’t bear the shame and humiliation
Does he mean I broke his new Dell  Windows 10 computer, she asked herself
Or a window in his apartment?
But he lives on the second floor and at my age, I can’t even carry a brick let alone hurls  one so high and so accurately
Still, he is  old so someone smashing his windows would be disturbing to him and make him angry
Or is the word BRICK a metaphor? It might mean his self esteem is shattered  like shop windows in riots  often  have been
As for his language, it reminded her that religious people tend to swear more and also commit more sexual offences,  or get found out more
Mary] looked down at her once beautiful blue  tweed skirt which had a few moth holes in it
Oh, well. if he is not coming to visit  I can keep wearing this holey skirt.He doesn’t like older women in jeans as he prefers looking at young women’s bottoms despite his religion.So I would have had to wear my one remaining decent  velvet winter skirt.I am too lazy to want to change.
Suddenly   her late husband’s former mistress Annie ran in
She was wearing a magenta wool tracksuit and green stiletto heels with pink ankle socks topped by a purple velvet trench coat with matching lipstick
Good heavens, Mary cried.You look very attractive, where did you get that coat from?
I got it in a jumble sale at the church, Annie muttered.Those new people are very rich and only wear clothes twice!
I shall have to come, said Mary, look at my skirt!She burst into tears which was a rare event.
Her little cat Emile was terrified.
Don’t cry, mother he whispered
.I will sleep with you tonight if that idiot is not coming
What! Don’t tell me that Peter has broken up with you.He seems  so charming,delightful and well educated and his works of art are brilliant  and innovative.Still  it was better than a text message
Yes, he just sent me an email calling me a  crackling  font
Perhaps he is mixing you up with someone else.Anyway, if he is heterosexual he should love a nice  female organ or two
That’s too rational,Annie dear.Only the gynaecologist loves it.She took some photos again!
Good grief.Did she show you? asked Annie.
No, said Mary.I don’t want to see it but since  I’ve been going there for 3 years it seems bigger than before.Maybe  the photos to be put into a medical journal.To think  my memorial will not be my face  but my vulva.Someone said vulva  is a rude word and I should say vagina but that makes no sense to me and it is an error anyway scientifically
She’s not done anything to make it bigger?
No, it must be all the attention it gets that makes it feel bigger in my mind
Still , without a  boyfriend, it’s not even worth thinking of.
Well, you can DIY, Annie told her but  for us women it’s the lying down gazing into someone’s eyes and smiling that matters more than the rest
Emile miaowed: Look into my eyes, mother.Or can’t Annie?
I’ll be getting an Electra complex, Mary told him.You don’t  do erotic things with  your mother nor with a lady who once slept with your dead husband  while he was still alive!
Well we cats don’t  know our cat mothers so we might have a good time with them unknowing
If only I were a cat, Mary muttered as she wept again clutching a  box of Kleenex for  Sad Women
Ring 999, Emile.Annie said.We need help now
Hello, my mum’s boyfriend has split with her by email.Can you send an ambulance for the computer, she hit it with a shoe and broke the screen
OK, will do, the lady replied courteously.Would you like some meringues too?
My goodness, since Brexit the NHS is even better.I should have asked for a steak and kidney pie as well.And mashed carrots.

And so say all of us

Can I have a  disengagement ring?
Just don’t use the phone.

Do you like gold wedding rings?
What alternatives are there? Shackles?

i  just agreed  to a divorce
From whom?
He didn’t say but his number is on my phone.I am getting  a million pounds settlement if I send him my credit card number by text

I want a stay at home mother.
Why?
So I can go out!
Hire someone
That’s ironic

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/dear-advice-columnist

http://www.textetc.com/modernist/postmodernism.html

Extract:

Groundlessness

Art, politics, public service, life in the great institutions — in none of these could be found any bedrock of unassailable probity. Serious shortcomings could be found in science, mathematics, linguistics, sociology, philosophy — in whatever purported to be true knowledge. All involved assumptions, cultural understandings, agreements as to what counted as important, and how that importance should be assessed. Even our language was imprecise, communal and secondhand. Where did reality stop and interpretation begin? In truth there was no essential difference between art and life: both were fictions. Was psychoanalysis a myth? Very well, so then were science and the humanities. All were self-supporting and self-referencing variably coherent systems with truths that were not transportable.

No doubt history has some ticklish problems of interpretation, but few suppose that the holocaust never happened. Even admirers of Paul de Mann were suddenly aroused from their solipsist musings when damaging evidence was found for their hero’s earlier support of Nazi ideas. No one can see how the exterior world can be unmediated by our senses and understandings, but the philosophic problems of asserting that reality is entirely created by language and intellectual concepts are formidable indeed. Science has its procedures and limitations, but its supposed “myths ” work in ways other myths do not. All disciplines have their own view of the world, but they are not equivalent or equally acceptable. Postmodernism largely overlooks how reality constrains actions, language and art.

Formlessness

Whence comes this desire for autonomy, for circumscribing form, for aesthetic shape? Look clearly at art and the dissonances will appear just as prominently. The New Criticism and traditional aesthetics simply left them out of account. Deviation from the expected, foregrounding, departures from the conventional are the essence of art, as Ramon Jacobson and the Russian formalists demonstrated. Art will be much stronger for being shapeless, indefinite, even incoherent. Nor need we stick rigidly to genres, or refrain from pastiche and parody. Art is the whole world, and the more that can be included the richer the artwork.

But of course, no such essence of art was ever demonstrated. No doubt the New Critics did speak too glibly of aesthetic harmonies and tension resolution, and poems could always be read that way, given sufficient ingenuity. Yet there are limits. The differences between a competent and an outstanding work of art may be difficult to prove to a first-year student, but everyone attests to the increasing discrimination that comes with love of the subject and prolonged study. It is a common observation that art begins in selection, and that an etching or black and white photograph may possess powers in proportion to what they exclude. If that is denied — and it is denied by Postmodernist — then many contemporary artworks will have no appeal to the more traditionally-minded, which is indeed the case.

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/pm_poetry.html

Postmodern Poetry

“Superior Lake” by Lorine Niedecker as an Example

• Conte, Joseph M. Unending Design: the Form of Postmodern Poetry. Introduction.
• McCorkle, James. ¡§The Inscription of Postmodernism in Poetry.¡¨

Taiwanese Postmodern Poetry (an Outline in Chinese)

Postmodern poetics respond to the condition of the world. In an age of instant telecommunications and metropolitan life, the postmodern serial and procedural forms attempt to accommodate the overwhelming diversity of messages and the lapse of a grand order that is replaced by an arbitrary personal order.

I. Language

A.  In postmodern poetics, there is a paradigmatic shift from the idea that language is
transparent to the disclosure of its physicality, its intimacy, its obdurate persistence, and its
paradoxical fragility. (M 43)

B. Reader¡Xpoem:

The reader’s position is contingent upon the poem and the poem¡¦s existence hinges upon
the reader and the varieties of knowledge the reader brings to the poem¡KThe adequation of
thing and sign has lapsed with the realization of the arbitrary condition of language. (M 43)

II. Self

A. Contemporary poetry:

1. Contemporary poetry positions its perspectives from a persona (who is often autobiographic) within a defined narrative structure.
2. Contemporary poetry avoids self-criticism and establishes itself as a singled unified voice. (M 48)

B. Postmodern poetry:

1. Postmodernist poetics suggests an ongoing reinterpretation of the self in the context of others. It specifically investigates the ethical-or self-critical capacity of language and its relationship to identity. (M 46)2. The critique of the privileged and entitled ¡§I¡¨ is central to postmodern poetics. While not a wholesale endorsement of many theoretic claims to he death of the author or the abandonment of intention, postmodern poetry nonetheless insists on a re-visioning of the authorial voice and its reception. (M 46)

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