I was quite pleased recently to be told that I am 'a bit outside the norm of poetry commentary in this country'. I hope my correspondent doesn't mind being quoted. I'm sure we all like to think we are not the usual run-of-the-mill, poets perhaps more than most, and it becomes more difficult to say what constitutes the normal as soon as one identifies everyone as individual. But I was glad not to be it and immediately developed the idea of the 'post-serious'.In the year that the Oxford dictionaries cited 'post-truth' as their word of the year, I'd like to be among the first of the expected spate of new 'post-' usages. I don't think Donald Trump is by any means the first to be 'post-truth' in his particular skewed presentation of the world but he seems to be the one to have given it a name.
Post-Serious would regard self-regard as a bad thing but not let that, as here, prevent us from being guilty of it ourselves. It is certainly not a manifesto and would regard them as one of the many things we want to avoid, swerve, fly by or, if we must, rise above. In terms of poetry commentary, it is a matter of avoiding being too precious, or too serious. By all means poetry, to many of us, is a precious thing and it can be taken seriously but it is a shame to see how earnestly some reviewers strive to say the most profound, insightful and often almost meaningless things about it. I'd prefer to say less rather than try too hard. As has been said in various ways before, if the thing could be described properly there would be no point in writing it. The poem is the thing, as soon as you start trying to say something in appreciation of it, you reduce it.
The Post-Serious is about enjoyment rather than study, about pleasure rather than righteousness, about thrills rather than virtue. It doesn't aspire to anything. It is amoral without being immoral, it has no ambition, it doesn't even want to improve anything.
In pop music, the Post-Serious likes nothing better than records like Sugar,Sugar, Wig Wam Bam, Barbados and the complete works of Abba and is suspicious of Dire Straits, The Doors, anything that attracts devoted audiences who want to discuss it and it knows that Queen are awful.
In classical music, it accepts the light touch of Boccherini or Donizetti, the glorious Water Music or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and generally only gives Wagner and Bruckner as much attention as they need.
But it doesn't want to prove anything. Like the Monkees, it's just trying to be friendly and doesn't really want to put anybody down. There is no centre, just the idea of such a thing, and so there is no reason to try to distance oneself from it. The Post-Serious is very happy to be 'mainstream' in order to distance itself from those who distance themselves from it.
As it once said at the top of this website, I didn't want to be a blogger but with a face that suited me for radio and a voice that suited me for the internet, that is what I inevitably became. As an amateur poet, I prefer a good review to book sales because it is art for art's sake. The same thing applies to this ongoing enterprise. That is a seriously Post-Serious attitude.
