Has any contemporary poet tried? I'd like to read some

A while back i was doing research on poetry and i live in texas, apperntly texas has a "state poem" which was written by some dude who was influenced by the finnish Kalevala 





https://www.netstate.com/states/symb/poems/tx_legend_of_old_stone_ranch.htm

What defines at epic poem? Just it’s length? Can it have any metre or rhyme scheme?

Omeros

>>21965342 (OP)

It is possible but not practical. Important to understand that poetry was a primitive information technology. Lengthy epic poetry would have been memorised and retold orally. The other issue is that epics traditionally are linked to the self-concept of races and nations, and we live in a sophisticated time of global citizenship :) so who or what would a modern epic be about?

>>21965342 (OP)

no, we are simply not epic anymore

>concept of races and nations

The modern concepts of race and the nation-state didn't exist during Homers time.

You know what he meant, autist.

this, we have no heroe culture and dont believe in gods as much as ancients did, so any attempts at epic would come off as cringy

>so who or what would a modern epic be about?

class struggle

Meter and rhyme are irrelevant, requirements are usually that it begins in media res, that it have the heightened heroic epic style of writing, center on a hero involved in a historical/national defining period, battle or position, to stay elevated and high with the poet not being in the first person but above and omniscient to the affairs, usually being based on already existent and important historical elements and myths, depending on the culture it can require further requirements such as requiring all major fields of poetic skill being displayed, thus some depiction of romance, battle, nature scenary, rhetoric and so forth, or some people literally just define it as a long poem with a very grand concept which it is centered on. Depends ultimately on who you ask, for example Coleridge and Wordsworth were gonna write an epic poem about a single dude and just be about his personal life, but they died before completion, some people consider the divine comedy an epic many do not, etc.



Cool I never heard of it, I’ll see if I can read it later. Thanks anon.

It must have been performed by bards

>>21965342 (OP)

Of course, you just need to have actual talent. Harry Martinson aced it in the 50s.

>>21965342 (OP)

Byron, Shelley, etc

>>21965342 (OP)

>epic poems of the 21st century

>unpronouncable name, pajeet dramatizing specific characters from the Ramayana

>some Norwegian wrote a sci-fi dystopia (only 35 pages though, so not really a book length poem)

>an American also did a sci-fi poem, this one is actually book length

>one about the history of Barbados

>a couple of YA books that were "written in verse"

bumping for recs

>>21965342 (OP)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body_(poem)

it's about the civil war. looks like it was popular during the first half of the 20th century, with Cagney reciting it as his favorite book and a radio play directed by Charles Laughton.

Zeus must kill niggas

>>21965342 (OP)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Was_Going_Down_the_Road

>>21965342 (OP)

Also, probably Qateeni Gabbara.

>>21965342 (OP)

Decline of the West is in effect an epic poem

Lord of the rings ?

>>21965342 (OP)

epick poetry is highly overrated

folk ballads were always more beloved than epick poems

>>21965342 (OP)

Yes. In my country, epic poetry persevered through the ottoman period, and new songs can still be found in recent day.

Aniara is great, not exactly contemporary but a lot more so than Homer etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epic_poems
