If we're going to be serious about this, Dorn's Gunslinger, Maximus,
Creeley's Pieces, most of Spicer, Blackburn's Journals. But again,
except for the Dorn, this quick list requires a definition of "long poems."
I've written what I think are long poems--20-odd pages, non-narrative
but cohesive. Not long by Milton's or Silliman's standards.
Definition? Too long to read comfortably at a reading.
Mark
At 10:34 AM 4/8/2010, you wrote:
>Two words: 1) Ashbery; 2) Flowchart
>
>Hal
>
>Halvard Johnson
>================
>
>The Perfection of Mozart's Third Eye (downloadable and free) is @
>http://www.scribd.com/doc/27039868/Halvard-Johnson-THE-PERFECTION-OF-MOZART-S-THIRD-EYE-Other-Sonnets
>
>[log in to unmask]
>http://sites.google.com/site/halvardjohnson/Home
>http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
>http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
>http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>
>
>
>
>
>On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Robin Hamilton <
>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Depends what you mean by a long poem -- the sustained narrative text is
> > still alive and kicking, or was as late as Hughes' _Gaudete_.
> >
> > I don't know if long mediations/testaments a la Wordsworth or Villon are
> > still being written, but I see no reason why they shouldn't
> be. (Whether it
> > is long enough to count as a long poem, Anne Stevenson certainly wrote her
> > own extended version of Villon in "A Testament" in _The Fiction Makers_.)
> >
> > Other than that, I suspect that much of what was once done in the long poem
> > is now more commonly performed in the sequence. This has
> certainly been the
> > strategy used by Edwin Morgan for some considerable time.
> >
> > (There's also the question as to whether what were once long "epic" poems
> > still exist as such, or whether -- I think this argument was made by Robert
> > Graves, and later by Philip Hobsbaum -- they have by now collapsed into
> > collections of shards and fragments.)
> >
> > Certainly, I think the long poem has to "justify itself" in a way that
> > wasn't always the case. But then, when it comes to this, what else is new?
> > I blame the bloody novel myself.
> >
> > Robin
> >
> > (still technically homeless)
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gerald Schwartz" <
> > [log in to unmask]>
> >
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 3:11 PM
> > Subject: 25 Questions: # 5
> >
> >
> >
> > 25 Questions, # 5:
> >
> > Is the long poem still relevant or is it just a museum?
> >
> > Gerald Schwartz
> >
Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University
of California Press).
http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
"Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House Book of
Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
English. There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
Nation
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