Dear Ali,
I like this. Tell me where the PhD comes in? Is it a Creative Writing
Programme degree, and to what extent are your epic ambitions a function of
degree degree regulations? Or, is this an epick on the Epick? I gave a
seminar in verse last year, an experience I will repeat as I too am working
on a long poem--I'd not call it an epic.
Today it seems to me the epic's pretensions place a block on working
at length, yet working at length is what is interesting (in as much as
poetry in one page first person bits is what is not interesting). The
question is: how then to work at length totally without the epic? The
examples you give fail to do this. Olson was as much a victim of the epic as
anyone, and but maybe a more useful one.
It is good to take the measure of length in poetry over again--what does one
expect it to signify? That's perhaps a step towards answering your
question about contents.
Wystan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ali Alizadeh [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, 19 February 2001 8:07 p.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The epic: pros and cons
Dear all
As I'm working on a PhD project which involves writing a self-styled
contemporary epic of sorts, I thought to perhaps generate a discussion
about the advantages and short-comings of this form within the group. The
main advantage that the epic bears over just about any other form of
writing is its primordial and prominent position in having shaped
literature as we know it. If civilisation was formed around the great
rivers of the middle-east, then literature came to existence as a result of
the flourishing powers of the ancient epics e.g. Gilgamesh, stories of
Innana, Mahabharatta, Illiad, etc. This historical prominence is also the
epic's biggest disadvantage in contemporary writing due to the 'post'
civilisation and anti-mythical stances of our popular/intellectual
cultures. While the 'hero quest' may have enjoyed a revival thanks to
psychoanalysis (Jung, Campbell, etc) in the past century, it has been
strongly dismissed by the like of Jameson, Barthes and others who see
mythology as a by-product of outdated modes of culture. The catch, of
course, is that some of today's very contemporary poets such as Derek
Walcott, Les Murray, Dorothy Porter, John Scott, Alan Wearne, only to name
a few, haven't been able to resist the ambitions and grandeurs of long
protagonist-driven narratives in poetry (which may or may not qualify as
epics) and it is these works which have attracted the most attention to
these writers. I'm interested in the current possibilities of the ancient
form, but as I subscribe to Olson's view that "form is an extension of
content" I wonder about the contents which are suitable for an epic
treatment. In times when the only way for a younger poet to make an impact
has been getting fairly short poems published in highly intellectual (read:
anti-mythical) journals, am I deluded to be investing my energies into a
work which can only be published as a dismembered body in a variety of
potentially hostile journals before seeing the light of the day as an
entire volume? And is there a way out of this maze?
Ali Alizadeh
|