E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

The news that the 500th Simpsons episode is done and dusted should be a time of global lament, not joy.   The Simpsons was once one of the smartest, sassiest, and yes, most post-modern, TV shows of all time - indeed, it will always be noteworthy for its first few brilliant seasons.  However, it has long become a tedious rehash, cheapening its satire of media and society by becoming that worst sort of bore - the hanger-on at the party with the lampshade on, who doesn't know when to go home.  23 seasons is enough.  The thought of two more is just groan-inducing.  Someone should get a big yellow rubber (eraser) out, and start cutting back...

In case you wanted to know more - or anything - about Postmodern Spoken Word - well, this is the place you want to be . Among other things, it kindly suggests I created a new spoken word genre, "Canadian Fusion". Gee, thanks, but: credit should also go to Tom Walsh , the intrepid musician-composer who pioneered the Swifty Lazarus style with me, in Montreal, throughout the 1990s.

[Note: I have edited this post, after a breakfast-time meeting with Charles Bernstein , today, and have therefore updated the date of the post. He and I discussed the fascinating work that Redell Olsen is doing, as in her work researching women poets. We also discussed the various ways in which American popular culture can be usefully reworked and considered, within an innovative practice. He also reminded me of the more severe strain of poetics that leans to Adorno , with Adorno's dislike of Jazz. We also discussed how comedy has long been "broken" into innovative North American poetic practice, as shown by works by Christian Bok , or, for instance, Deer Head Nation .] According to Redell Olsen, in her thought-provoking, engaged chapter "Postmodern poetry in Britain" (from The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry ), there has been, and remains, an "important and decisive split in post-war poetry in Britain". This split, I belie...