Modernists and Surrealists and Postmodernists Ad Nauseam as Spoiled Brats Like Rimbaud

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

“A desire for form and limit conquers us.” ~ Lorca, in “Oda a Salvador Dalí”

The ambiguity is nearly pain

Unbearable.  Beelzeblubber would

Torment himself to equal it.  The strain

To sort the meaning out and lift the hood

This challenge gives is just what Dalí wants.

The whole of Modernism hopes to kill

The need for form and meaning.  Hubris haunts

The halls of art and leaves the world with swill

But even swill has chunks in it and form

In chunks is form the same.  The artists can’t

Escape this fact.  They cause their waspish storm

But it is shape, a shape defeating cant.

  A shapeless nightmare shape is yet a shape.

    They fail.  They, tortured, never could escape.

~ Phillip Whidden