ary[edit]

Lynn Keller notes that the long poem enabled modernists to include sociological, anthropological,
and historical material. Many long poems deal with history not in the revisionary sense but as a
simple re-telling in order to prove a point. Then there are those who go a step further and recite a
place's or people's history in order to teach. Like revisionary mythopoesis, they may attempt to make
a point or demonstrate a new perspective by exaggerating or editing certain parts of a history.

Concerns and controversies[edit]

Fears of the writer[edit]
Long poem authors sometimes find great difficulty in making the entire poem coherent and/or
deciding on a way to end it or wrap it up. Fear of failure is also a common concern, that perhaps the
poem will not have as great an impact as intended. Since many long poems take the author's lifetime
to complete, this concern is especially troubling to anyone who attempts the long poem. Ezra
Pound is an example of this dilemma, with his poem The Cantos.[3] As the long poem's roots lie in the
epic, authors of the long poem often feel an intense pressure to make their long poems the defining
literature of the national identity or the shared identity of a large group of people. The American long
poem is under pressure from its European predecessors, revealing a special variety of this
anxiety. Walt Whitman tried to achieve this idea of characterizing the American identity in Song of
Myself. Thus, when the author feels that their work fails to reach such a caliber or catalyze a change
within the intended audience, they might consider the poem a failure as a whole.
Poets attempting to write a long poem often struggle to find the right form or combination of forms to
use. Since the long poem itself cannot be strictly defined by one certain form, a challenge lies in
choosing the most effective form.[4]

Generic conundrums[edit]
Lyric intensity
Some critics, most emphatically Edgar Allan Poe, consider poetry as a whole to be more closely tied
to the lyric. They complain that the emotional intensity involved within a lyric is impossible to
maintain in the length of the long poem, thus rendering the long poem impossible or inherently a
failure.[5]
In his article "The long poem: sequence or consequence?" Ted Weiss quotes a passage from M. L.
Rozenthal and Sally M. Gall's "The Modern Poetic Sequence" inspired by Poe's sentiments, "What
we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones.... It is needless to demonstrate
that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense
excitements are, through a psychal-necessity, brief. For this reason, at least one half of the Paradise
Lost is essentially prose—a succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably,with
corresponding depressions—the whole being deprived, through the extremities of its length, of the
vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect. In short, a poem to be truly a poem
should not exceed a half hour's reading. In any case, no unified long poem is possible." [6]
Multivocality
One genre theory claims that once a poem takes on multiple voices, it becomes a novel. Many long
poems do make use of multiple voices, while still maintaining all the element of a poem, and
therefore cause even more confusion when trying to define their genre. [citation needed]
Naming and subgenres
Critic Lynn Keller also expresses concerns about the genre in her essay "Pushing the Limits." Keller
states that because of the debate over and prevalence of subgenres and forms within the
overarching genre of long poem, critics and readers tend to choose one subgenre, typically the epic
form, as being the "authentic" representative form of the genre. Therefore, this causes the other
equally important subgenres to be subject to criticism for not adhering to the more "authentic" form
of long poem.[7] Other critics of the long poem sometimes hold the belief that with long poems, there
is no "middle ground." They view long poems as ultimately being either epics or lyrics. [citation needed]
Many critics refer to the long poem by various adjective-filled subgenre names that often are made
of various components found within the poem. These can lead to confusion about what a long poem
is exactly. Below you will find a list describing the most common (and agreed upon) subgenre
categories.[3]

Advantages of the genre[edit]

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The long poem genre has several advantages over prose and strictly lyric poetry. The most obvious
difference between the long poem and other literary genres is the sheer difficulty of composing a
long work entirely in verse. Poets who undertake the long poem face the serious problem of creating
a work that is consistently poetic, sometimes taking strict forms and carrying them through the whole
poem. However, the poets who do choose the long poem turn this liability into an advantage—if a
poet can write a long poem, they prove themselves to be worthy. The very difficulty gives the genre
an implicit prestige. Long poems have been among the most influential texts in the world since
Homer. By writing a long poem, a poet participates in this tradition and must prove their virtuosity by
living up to the tradition. As discussed below, the traditionally difficult long poem's prestige can be
revised to serve radical purposes.
Additional benefits of the long poem:

 The long poem provides the artist with a greater space to create great meaning.
 A long poem allows the author to be encyclopedic in their treatment of the world, as opposed
to the potentially narrow focus of the lyric.
 A long poem poet can work on a long poem their entire life, weaving in their impressions
gleaned from the span of several generations (and historical events); it can be an ongoing work.
 A long poem can encapsulate not just traditional poetry, but incorporate dialogue, prose
passages, and even scripting.
 A reader can absorb an entire world view from a long poem.

Female authors in the genre[edit]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the first female authors to attempt an epic poem. [citation needed] In
her article "Written in blood: the art of mothering epic in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning",
Olivia Gatti Taylor explores Browning's attempt to write an authentically feminine epic poem
titled Aurora Leigh. Taylor posits that Browning began this process with the structure of her poem,
"While earlier epics like the Aeneid and Paradise Lost have twelve books, Aurora Leigh was
conceived as a nine-book epic; thus, the very structure of the work reveals its gestational nature.
According to Sandra Donaldson, Barrett Browning's own experience at age forty-three of "giving
birth and nurturing a child" greatly influenced her poetry "for the better", deepening her "sensitivity".
Genealogy[edit]
The most important "parent genre" to the long poem is the epic. As stated on the page of the main
article on the epic, "An epic is a lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious
subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation." The term
"long poem" includes all the generic expectations of epic and the reactions against those
expectations. Many long poem subgenres share characteristics with the epic, including: telling the
tale of a tribe or a nation, quests, history (either recitation or re-telling in order to learn from the past),
a hero figure, or prophecies.
Other subgenres of the long poem include lyric sequence, series, collage, and verse-novel. What
unites each of these subgenres under the heading of long poem is that their length has importance
in their meaning. Each subgenre, however, is unique in its style, manner of composition, voice,
narration, and proximity to outside genres.
Sequence poetry uses the chronological linking of poems to construct meaning, as each lyric builds
on the poems previous to it. Examples include Louise Glück's The Wild Iris, and older sonnet cycles,
such as Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella or Dante's Vita Nuova. Serial lyrics similarly depend
on the juxtaposition and dialogue between individual lyrics to build a greater depth of meaning.
Narrative poems rely heavily on
Often, these subgenres are blended, blurred or overlapped to create second-generation subgenres.
The blurring between the lines of the subgenres is what makes the long poem so hard to define, but
it also marks the growing creativity in the use of the form.

Subgenres[edit]
Epic[edit]

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript. Beowulf was one of the first long poems in English.

Critic Joseph Conte describes the epic as a long poem that "has to have grand voice and
purpose. . . it has to say something big." [8] Lynn Keller describes one of the epic's aspects as
including a "quasi-circular quest-journey structure" that she says is present in the long poem Song of
Myself by Whitman. Yet that long poem, Keller notes, does not have a "specified end toward which
the poem or speaker is directed," unlike a more traditional long poem. Though long poems do have
roots in the epic form, that does not mean long poems that are epic-like are completely epic. A
second example of long poems distancing themselves from the traditional epic form is seen in Helen
In Egypt by H.D. Though traditional epics feature physical quests or journeys, Helen In Egypt is
about the psychological journey of Helen.
Other characteristics of the epic include a hero figure, myths, and quests for the characters. Many
such characteristics are seen in various long poems, but with some changes. For example, Helen In
Egypt brings mythic revision, or revisionary mythopoesis, into play. Even though it includes the myth
from the epic, the revised telling of the myth makes the long poem stand out as its own form.
Additionally, one cannot look at the epic as a single, unified form of inspiration for long poems. As
Keller points out, certain long poems can have roots in very specific epics instead of the overall epic
category.
The long poem Omeros by Derek Walcott has drawn mixed criticism on whether it should or should
not be tied to the traditional epic form. Those against that idea say that the poem's story is not as
important as those found in traditional epics. Omeros tells the tale of fishermen in the Caribbean
fighting over and lusting after a waitress instead of a typically heroic tale of battles and quests. On
the other side of the argument lies the point that it is important to keep in mind that Omeros has ties
to the epic genre, if only as a contrast. By putting more simple characters in the forefront as opposed
to warriors, Walcott revises the traditional epic form, which these critics say is something to notice as
opposed to cutting off Omeros from any ties to the epic whatsoever. Furthermore, these critics say
that one cannot ignore the epic influence on the poem since its characters' names are taken from
Homer. In Omeros there are distinct elements obviously influenced by traditional epics, such as a
trip to the underworld, talk of a muse, etc.
In interviews, Walcott has both affirmed and denied that Omeros is tied to the epic form. In one
interview he stated that it was a type of epic poem, but in another interview he said the opposite,
stating as part of his evidence that there are no epic-like battles in his poem. In Omeros Walcott
implies that he has never read Homer, which is probably untrue based on the character names
derived from Homer. Walcott's denial of his poem being tied too heavily to the epic form may stem
from his concern that people might only think of it as being an epic-influenced poem instead of
transcending the epic genre.
Based on this criticism of Omeros it is clear that the generic identity of a long poem greatly
contributes to its meaning. Because long poems are influenced by many more strictly defined
genres, a long poem revising strict generic rules creates striking contrast with epic-genre
expectations.
Keller also notes that she agrees with critic Susan Friedman when Friedman expresses her concern
that the long poem associated with the epic has been "the quintessential male territory whose
boundaries enforce women's status as outsiders on the landscape of poetry." Considering that there
are many long poem authors that are women, one cannot fully associate the long poem with the epic
genre.
However, the typical exclusion of women in the epic tradition is for many female authors what makes
the long poem an appealing form for laying cultural claim to the epic.
Control of or at least inclusion in the creation of a cultural epic is important bec