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)

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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.