The Multiplied Eye

[TranquillityBase]

Caught on the cusp
of the Age of Aquarius
and the Me Generation
watching them march past,
Generation X, Millennials,
Generation Z, Gen Alpha
trapped in a biblical procession
through the Holocene
crossing the bridge into oblivion
where I wait on the other side
with milk and strawberries
for the stragglers like me.
We dance on a horizon
cutouts on a backlit stage
clumsy to reach an end
while simultaneously
saving the innocent.

[Erthona]

I found it instructive to only read the last word of each line. fun experiment.

[TranquillityBase]

When writing this, I used "generational nicknames" found on Google, of which I am quite suspicious.  At least after "Me generation".  I wonder if you who were born in the 1970s, 1980s, etc, call/ed yourselves something besides the generic "nicknames" I found?  This is a question if anybody cares to answer.

I'm pretty sure there must have been more interesting ones than "Gen X, Millennials (tho that one's pretty good), Gen Z and Gen Alpha"

[CRNDLSM]

I liked 'generation why' a song by reverend Horton heat.  I just learned that gen x was originally 'the baby busters' because they busted the baby boom.  but it sounded bad so they took gen x from a book and most don't identify with it.

---

Also the silent generation from the 20s to 40s, 'the greatest generation' living through the great depression,

[Erthona]

Although I was born in 1957, I never felt kinship to the title "Baby Boomers". Plus the town I grew up in was about 10 years behind the times. We were generally called the "freaks". As far as I know, nobody called us "Gen X" except now retroactively. By the time I became musically aware, the 60's had passed me by. To me, what defined what you were was not when you were born, but what culture and music you were involved with. Of course that's just what I experienced and I never have been big on making categories. Just as William Blake was initially classified in the "Age of Reason", but he was much more a Romantic along with Coleridge.

dale

[TranquillityBase]

s

 To me, what defined what you were was not when you were born, but what culture and music you were involved with. 

dale

I think you've hit the nail on the head.  I was (less precisely) thinking the same thing.  The year you happen to be born is a statistic.  Statisticians are coming up with these generational names.

What I was looking for was what people called their generation (or their particular age group) for real.  But perhaps they didn't give themselves a name.  I think "Me Generation" came from Time Magazine.  Guess I need to go back and check out the mass media of the 1980s- to find the real nicknames.

[Mark A Becker]

Hey Tim- I always seem to find another poem within your poems:

We dance
cutouts on a backlit stage
clumsy to reach an end...
I wait on the other side
with milk and strawberries
for the stragglers like me.

[TranquillityBase]

Hey Tim- I always seem to find another poem within your poems:

We dance
cutouts on a backlit stage
clumsy to reach an end...
I wait on the other side
with milk and strawberries
for the stragglers like me.

I'm reading The Wasteland: a Biogrpahy of a Poem.  One of the many interesting ideas I've come across is that every poem written is based in large part on every other poem that has ever been written, the tradition, so I think it's great how you can do that.  The Tradition in action.

I do miss the bridge to oblivion