POETREE

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.