Awhile back I wrote a series on epic poetry. I wanted to revisit the issue and offer some thoughts on the differences between epic poetry and long narrative verse. Some people may place them in the same category and I really don’t think we should. The above-mentioned series played fast and loose with the term “epic”, but here I will try to delineate a little more clearly about what is and what isn’t an epic poem. Not all long narratives should be considered epics.

Epics have always been thought of as tales of heroic deeds, but that is really a narrow view. Not all epics are heroic in nature. You can also have epics of time, epics of place, and other types of epics as well. But most epics are long narratives. Even if the poetry is lyrical in nature as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” or “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” there is still a narrative strain throughout the poem. It is an essential characteristic of an epic in my mind. The narrative is meant to tell a story.

An epic poem, however, need not be long. Homer’s Iliad and Oddyssey, of course, are epics. The Aeneid and The Divine Comedy are epics, but so is Kubla Khan. And as far as epics go, Kubla Khan isn’t very long.

But just because a poem is long and narrative in nature, that doesn’t make it an epic. An epic must also possess some significant cultural myth. I don’t mean myth in a “non-true” sense. A myth may very well contain some truth, but it is a story of a culture’s core beliefs. And an epic tries to tap into that in some way. The culture can be a local culture or it may very well be a global culture, but whatever is the common myth of that culture, that is the backbone of the epic story for that culture. An epic poem plays into that whereas a narrative poem may just seek to provide an anecdote or to give readers a glimpse into a slice of life or a person’s character. Or it may be an essay on the human condition.

Epics do not generally content themselves with being narrative myths. They tend to explore what is spectacular about the common myth and may be take a myth and “blow it up” so that it can be seen with great glory or scrutiny. The narrative poem only wants to be good at sharing a tale.

Many modern narrative poems are not epics. They may be very good long narratives, but they aren’t epics. And this is not to say that an epic need be in some traditional form or structure. An epic may very well be experimental in nature, or contain experimental elements. Of course, this can also be a prominent feature of a long narrative poem except that the epic contains the elements of the common myth, which the long narrative may not strive for.

Whether a poem is an epic or a long narrative non-epic poem, it must be judged within the school or movement to which its author subscribes as well as be treated as an individual poem in its own right. For this reason, a poem may be considered an epic if it follows the traditions of one school and not an epic if it falls into another movement. That is, if, say, “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror” were rewritten as a New Formalist poem then it wouldn’t be considered an epic at all, but as a Postmodern reflection of art it could very well be classified as an epic of self, or an epic ekphrastic poem.

To be sure, there is some crossover between the two forms. An epic by definition is a long narrative. Many long narratives are epics. But the classification of each may be disputed among poets from various schools and traditions. I am a firm believer that a strong epic is the highest achievement that a poet of any culture can create. A successful epic is a blessing to its audience.