I am big. It's the pictures that got small. 
--Norma Desmond [2]
Well, yes, there's nothing like trotting out one of the tiredest, most hag-ridden quotations [3] in pop culture to get this thing off to a limping start, but bear with me here; I think I have a good reason for using it and with a little luck, I'll get to it eventually.
Below is a short list of long poems. Some, like Song of Roland [4] and The Divine Comedy [5] are dictionary definition [6]-style epics [7]; others are sequences of interrelated poems that trace narrative arcs. Snodgrass' The Fuhrer Bunker [8] and Berryman's The Dream Songs [9] are meant to be read as "stories" comprised of stand-alone poems.
The list runs in more or less chronological order and by dipping into it at random points following a downward trajectory you will note an evolution or devolution (depending on your tastes) in the nature of the hero [10], as well as drastic transformations in narrative purpose, and poetic form [11]. The stories grow smaller, more inward, more fragmentary as we progress through time. Heroes have always had faults--think of Achilles [12] sulking on the beach, or Aeneas shucking off Dido [13] like a bad suit, so it is not that our heroes have become more human, so much as they have become disembodied. It is as if the canonical Western hero, and perhaps the human species, has climbed the rungs of his backbone and curled up inside his skull to wander no more, instead exploring the winding corridors of the self, becoming paler, more solipsistic, more accustomed to the dark as the centuries wash away the sand beneath his feet.
This corkscrewing inward corresponds to the transformation of poetry from a form of mass (or at least popular) entertainment to its current state as the most academic, most hermetically-sealed of the arts. The self has become the final frontier for poetic discourse and this coincides I think with the ascendance of the lyric mode. Poems have grown smaller as the worlds the poet feels competent to encompass grow smaller.
As always, comments, disagreements and suggestions for future posts are encouraged.
Thanks again to Richard D. for suggesting this topic.
A Short List of Long Poems from the collections of Harris County Public Libraries
Works and Days [14] & Theogony [15] / Hesiod
The Book of Job [16] /
The Metamorphoses [17] / Ovid
One Thousand and One Nights [18] /
Song of Roland [19] /
Divine Comedy [20] / Dante Alleghieri
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [21] /
Orlando Furioso [22] / Ludovico Ariosto
The Faerie Queene [23] / Sir Edmund Spenser
Paradise Lost [24] & Paradise Regained [25] / John Milton
Faust [26] / J. W. von Goethe
Lady of the Lake [27] / Sir Walter Scott
Queen Mab [28] / Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Battle of Marathon [29], Prometheus Bound [29] & The Seraphim [30] / Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Endymion [31] & Hyperion [32] / John Keats
Don Juan [33] / George Gordon, Lord Byron
Evangeline [34] & The Song of Hiawatha [35] / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Prelude [36] / William Wordsworth
Idylls of the King [37] / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Eugene Onegin [38] / Aleksandr Puskkin
The Wanderings of Oisin [39] / W. B. Yeats
Mensagem [40] / Fernando Pessoa
Paterson [41] / William Carlos Williams
The Cantos [42] / Ezra Pound
"A" / Louis Zukofsky [43]
The Dream Songs [44] / John Berryman
The Fuhrer Bunker / W. D. Snodgrass [49]
Garbage [50], Sphere, Glare & Tape for the Turn of a Year / A. R. Ammons [51]
Girls on the Run / John Ashbery [52]
Louise in Love / Mary Jo Bang [53]
Splay Anthem [54] / Nathaniel Mackey
Fredy Neptune / Les Murray [55]
Photo: Knight's Castle by Hartwig HKD [56]
- A [57]
- Anne Carson [58]
- Berryman [59]
- book length poems. hesiod [60]
- book of job [61]
- Cantos [62]
- Changing Light at Sandover [63]
- Dante [64]
- divine comedy [65]
- Dream Songs [66]
- Edmund Spenser [67]
- Endymion [68]
- epic poems [69]
- Eugene Onegin [70]
- Faerie Queene [71]
- Faust [72]
- Girls on the Run [73]
- Goethe [74]
- Green Knight [75]
- Idylls of the King [76]
- John Ashbery [77]
- John Keats [78]
- Lord Byron [79]
- Mary Jo Bang [80]
- Merrill [81]
- Milton [82]
- Nathaniel Mackey [83]
- Norma Desmond [84]
- Orlando Furioso [85]
- ovid [86]
- Paterson [87]
- Percy Bysshe Shelley [88]
- Pessoa [89]
- Poetry [90]
- Pound [91]
- Pushkin [92]
- Queen Mab [93]
- Sir Gawain [94]
- Splay Anthem [95]
- Sunset Boulevard [96]
- Tennyson [97]
- Walter Scott [98]
- William Carlos Williams [99]
- Yeats [100]
- Zukofsky [101]
