"The only way forward from Postmodernism is as a reaction against it—not a reaction in the sense of destruction (what could be more Postmodernist than destruction of destruction?), but reaction as “backing away from the edge.” Postmodernism is the abyss of nihilism, a place with nowhere further to go, and in which going only leads to more nothingness. The abyss consumes, convincing those who gaze on it that it is the truth—but it is not inescapable. We can back away from it. Backing away from this abyss necessarily amounts to backing into meaning—and into an understanding of poetry that has existed across all cultures through all of human history. That function is to find meaning in the world through beauty—expressing the inexpressible in words. In this respect, ironically, poetry implicitly acknowledges the Postmodern doctrine of the insufficiency of language. But that has never posed an insurmountable problem until Postmodernism. All prior poetry used the language available to express as closely as it could the ideas that inspired it."