Perhaps Tolkien is the closest we have and the movies may be better than the books. We are too cynical, too busy, too much ennui, and too much déjà vu. I write poetry primarily for myself bit I must admit, I like it when someone says it is good or stirred them.Įpics alas are a rare breed now and even more so, poetic epics. I have just finished a poem which I scribbled off one afternoon in 2007 about the Victoria Dock, Hobart, Tasmania. In some ways it reminds me of the style of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. I could not find the book my late father owned but I bought one from a book store in Canada this year. Indeed I read it as a student over 30 years ago and I couldn’t put it down. There have been many criticisms of this work but I still find it pleasant to read and with the same lilt as the Greek. Cotterill’s translation (1924) of Homer’s Odyssey in iambic hexameter in English in the same style as the original Greek. Know your reasons, then you can decide on your own approach. Here is Michael Palma’s translation, possibly, the best triple rhymed translation available. The only thing that might come closest to serving as a model for what you would like to do (I think) are rhymed translations of Dante’s Inferno. By comparison, it doesn’t take long for the closed heroic couplets of Pope to sound utterly contrived (see his translations of Homer and Virgil).Ī rubaiyat thyme scheme would be extremely difficult to sustain on a large scale. This allows him to de-emphasize the rhymes. Chamberlayne came closest, perhaps, because he used open heroic couplets. A great poet can subdue meter (making one forget than he or she is reading meter), but no poet can subdue thousands and thousands of rhymes. In an epic length poem, it’s hard to imagine how it will sound like anything less than an affectation. In shorter poems, like sonnets, rhyme can powerfully underline the content. Dismissing your effort will be so much easier if you’re rhymes are amateurish.īesides that, the limitations might indeed be too stifling. If the world is going to criticize your work, let it be for dogmatic reasons (we just don’t like rhyme), not because you’re a bad poet or bad rhymer. If you’re going to write a rhyming epic, you had better be a good poet – maybe a genius. What defines success? – the effort to write it? – it’s reception? I question… whether post-Milton, it is even appropriate or worth the effort to try to do so. I smile because, on the one hand, you’re concerned as to how it will be received and, on the other, you expect no one will really read it. That’s what comes with talking to one’s wife and writing at the same time.) (I’ve edited this comment about 20 times. Chamberlayne’s rhyme scheme is that of the open heroic couplet – which came to be known as Romance Couplets. Some might consider this more of a romance than an epic (although the same is said of the Faerie Queene). Check out Pharonnida by William Chamberlayne. (English, compared to Italian for example, is much more difficult to rhyme over the course of thousands of lines). I suspect most poets chose not to, in English, because of the effort needed to sustain such an enterprise. So… Yes, it is possible to write a true English epic using rhyme. You’ll notice that Spencer’s Faerie Queene is included as an example of an epic, written in what came to be known as the Spencerian Stanza (they rhyme). Such ages have been experienced by many nations, usually at a stage of development in which they have had to struggle for a national identity. Thus scholars have often identified “epic” with a certain kind of heroic oral poetry, which comes into existence in so-called heroic ages. These traditions frequently consist of legendary narratives about the glorious deeds of their national heroes. Britannica offers up the following:Įpic poetry has been used by peoples all over the world and in different ages to transmit their traditions from one generation to another, without the aid of writing. However, it is worth noting it’s strong roots in the oral tradition and how the great epics (in Latin and in English) use meter to sustain that tradition. An epic is loosely defined by its subject matter and breadth, rather than by the verse form in which it’s written.
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