Matthew Francis wrote:
>
> Long poems do test the patience of contemporary readers - but
> they've almost always been segmented into cantos or fits or
> chapters.
there's also Donald Hall's 'inning's ... Hall of course is a long way
short of the epic, but his book length poems (The Old Life, The One
Day, e.g.) are interesting examples of the contemporary long poem
another important example of what can be done in the contemporary
long poem is Geoffrey Hill - The Mystery of the Charity of Charles
Peguy, The Triumph of Love, and recently Speech! Speech! - but of
course these are in no way epics
Frederick Turner has subtitled two of his works 'an epic poem'
(maybe he's done more, i wouldn't know) - there's 'The New World'
(1985, Princeton) - set in the year 2376, and 'Genesis' (1988,
Saybrook), also set in the future - to what extent these actually
conform to various definitions of the 'epic' is a debatable point,
but it is interesting to see the poems being published and
marketed as epics.
:david
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