Icebreaker #2: FONSFAQ Long and Serial Poetry

[poetree_admin]

Adapted from dingsi's FONSFAQ posts

FONSFAQ stands for "Frequently (Or Not So Frequently) Asked Questions" (about a particular topic). Someone hosts a topic, preferably one per entry, and then in comments people can ask - i.e. leave prompts - or claim some issue relating to the topic that they have always wanted to explain/write about. The host then collects the links to all essays that people have written in reply to the prompts and everybody has a lot to read and learn! dingsi maintains the master list of FONSFAQs to date.

For the purposes of this FONSFAQ, a 'long' poem is a thousand words or more, and serial poetry involves two or more related poems.

Leave a comment with your inquiry or, if you already have a topic in mind you'd like to write about, mention that. Serious or funny, fannish or non-fandom, broad or specific, things you've always wondered about or wish more people knew...
Go through the prompts and when you think you can claim one, reply to it (i.e. sign up).
To make things easier, please use the words "prompt" or "taken" in the subject line of your comment!

ETA: if you would like to respond to a prompt that has already been claimed, please continue the conversation by responding to the answer(s).



LONG POETRY

Claimed

Is All Long Poetry Epic Poetry? (prompt by jjhunter; claimed by alexseanchai, lnhammer)

Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation) (claimed by jjhunter)

define 'epic poetry' (prompt by alexseanchai; claimed by lnhammer)

Open

define 'didactic' poetry (prompt by jjhunter)



SERIAL POETRY

Claimed


Open

What's the difference between 'serial poetry' and multiple poems about the same topic? (prompt by jjhunter)

===
Last edited 6/30/13 by jjhunter

Comments

Prompt: Is All Long Poetry Epic Poetry?

[jjhunter]

When I think of poems over a thousand words, I think of classics like Beowulf and the Aeneid, i.e. epic poetry. Are there any traditions - or single examples - of non-epic long poetry?

Taken: Is All Long Poetry Epic Poetry?

[alexseanchai]

I don't think I'm writing an epic? But Snow-White-in-hexameter is past a thousand words...

Re: Prompt: Is All Long Poetry Epic Poetry?

[lnhammer]

Lots of them. Compare one of Virgil's other's works, the Georgics -- it's a long didactic rather than epic work, on how to farm. And just as Ovid parodied the epic tradition with Metamorphoses, he parodied the didactic tradition with Ars amatoria, a manual on seduction. Before both, of course, was De rerum natura, Lucretius's long explication of Epicurian philosophy. All of these were working off Helenistic Greek models, btw.

Personally, I distinguish between novels in verse, such as Seth's The Golden Gate, Burgess's Byrne, and the current spate of YA novels such as by Ellen Hopkinson, from epic poems. The distinction can be subtle, yes, but so can the distinction between high fantasy or even just a fantasy set in a secondary world and an actual epic fantasy. There's blurring at the border, but away from it, the genres are reasonably clear. Turner's Genesis and Linde's Alamo are consciously epic in manner, and quite different from novel in effect. Merwin's The Folding Cliffs, I'm less certain of -- in part because I'm not sure it's successful at whatever it is it's trying to do.

(All examples in the previous paragraph are from within the last 20 years, btw.)

So, yes, at least two traditions of non-epic long poetry, one classic and one modern.

ETA: Forgot to mention The Voyage of the Arctic Tern, which is an epic adventure yarn for middle-grade readers (!) -- which blends novel and epic effects in a different way.

---L.

Prompt: define 'epic poetry'

[alexseanchai]

^

Re: Prompt: define 'epic poetry'

[lnhammer]

When someone manages to define "epic fantasy," we'll come a long way toward defining "epic poetry."

---L.

Re: Prompt: define 'epic poetry'

[lnhammer]

That's not meant as a snide answer, btw -- the distinction between epic fantasy and other kinds of fantasy set in secondary worlds mirrors that between epic poetry and other kinds of long poems. And in both cases, it doesn't help that often enough, people loosely use the epic term to cover the whole set -- even though labeling, say, Georgics as the same genre as Iliad diminishes both the heroic intent of the latter and the domestic intent of the former, and likewise for the domestic Spindle's End and heroic The Lord of the Rings.

---L.

Taken: Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation)

[jjhunter]

Forget mere word count, the original Old English version of Beowulf comes out to a hefty 3186 lines. As part of writing my own Beowulf-inspired long poem Mother-Tongue for Yuletide a few years back, I became intimately familiar with Seamus Heaney's marvelous modern English verse translation in both written and audio forms, as well as passingly familiar with John Gardner's Grendel and various tidbits of Beowulf scholarship such as those found in Alivin A. Lee's 'Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: Beowulf as Metaphor'.

It's been a few years since, but if you have any question big or small related to the original Beowulf, the Seamus Heaney translation, or 'Mother-Tongue', I'm happy to answer as best I can.

Prompt: Define 'didactic' poetry

[jjhunter]

Would love to see someone elaborate on what lnhammer meant by the "domestic intent" (as opposed to epic poetry's "heroic intent") of didactic poetry.

Prompt: What's the difference between 'serial poetry' and multiple poems about the same topic?

[jjhunter]

Inquiring minds are curious about where you draw the line...

Re: Prompt: What's the difference between 'serial poetry' and multiple poems about the same topic?

[bookblather]

Personally, I feel like serial poetry is like a serial novel-- it's one story told over a series of poems. A series of poems about the same topic is more like... a cycle of poetry, or themed poetry, but it isn't a serial. If that makes sense.