Why aren't there more epic poetry books?

Why aren't there more epic poetry books?

because the romantics ruined poetry forever

theres like, 24 works. Each one is of rediculous quality. Which is rare for humans to be worthy of. If you want more, you'd have to invade a bunch of countries and act like a Roman or Viking or imperiliast.

Odysseus Elitis who was one of the moderngreeks who won the nobel, wrote an epic poem about world war 2.
Of course, people wont get the same feeling if they dont read it in the original language.

>muh purity
its pretty much the same, art has no language

what's the title?

Because you havent written more

Why spend so much effort trying to recall the history of an event or person in a poetic manner when you can just plainly state it and provide the same information?

It depends upon your definition of epic poem.
The original epics were stories of people, they mixed historic events with other of fantastic nature. Each one giving descriptions of gods, heroic acts and explanations for the creation.
To attribute to gods events such as hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural phenomenons are no longer credible, and historical events are told in prose - historic fiction.
Having said that, there are many works considered to be part of the "epic" genre that were published in the last 50 years.
Another thing that makes its structure unenviable today is the lack of credibility of the epic hero.

L O N G F E L L O W

How? Genuinely interested in ur teery

Paradise Lost

the romantic poets broke away from the epics to focus on "personal expression" and "feelings" and began poetry's long descent into Rupi Kaur territory

Paradise Regained

The most recent I can remember is Aniara.

I can't remember who it was but someone I was reading said one of the fundamental causes of the deterioration of literature beginning in the 19th and leading into the 20th C. was the subsidization of talent and connection with poetry's tradition with the Personality of the writer instead. And so obviously there will be no lasting value.
People like Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Bukowski, and all the imitators of Joyce who made the main focus of their work themselves and little beyond that.
This lead inevitably led to the poverty of literature that we are now seeing with Rupi and her ilk but it can all be easily rectified if people once again begin disciplining themselves and returning to the Sources of literature rather than continuing to make the crux of their work their measly ego and personal experience of life which are so grossly limited.

Sorry, you're both wrong. Poetry linked with the personality of the writer has a fairly deep tradition going all the way back to Horace, Alcaeus and Sappho, and arguably Dante. Many of these poets are superior to the Romantics, and poetry did not degenerate as a result. There's absolutely nothing wrong with "personal expression" and "feelings" in poetry.

Modern poetry is bad for a multitude of reasons, and the Romantics are not to blame. If you want a reason for the decline in quality in any form of art—whether music, sculpture, literature, or poetry—look to the loss of classical education in the 1960s. We've unanchored ourselves from the tradition and its masters, thereby leaving us with no benchmark to compare our works to. The biggest secret to art is that derivation is far superior to originality.

I would argue the Romantics still appreciated the epic form. Milton's "Paradise Lost" was a gigantic influence on virtually all of the main Romantics. John Keats attempted to write multiple epics, including "Endymion" and "Hyperion." You could argue that Wordsworth's "Prelude" is an epic of the imagination and the poetic process. However, the Romantics usually rendered the epic into the poetic fragment, such as with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

I like this answer

But there are.

La Araucana is just as good as Iliad

Ramayana and Mahabharata both are better than Iliad and Odyssey but eurocentric cucks will never even touch them.

Most of them were probably lost in time.

I could never tell what the fuck is going on on this cover. It looks like Odysseus (I assume) is kissing someone's arm, possibly his own? Also there's a fish by his head. Is he underwater? What is happening?

I have never seen a post in a bookshelf thread showing even nearly an exhaustive reading of even the ancient western epics, let alone eastern or modern ones.

Never seen Statius or Nonnus on a shelf.

there aren't really any good translations except for abridged versions like R.K. Narayan and it's totally understandable if people find those forgettable.

because poetry is at most a pleb tier medium
real intellectuals have moved on to theory

once people discover the limitations of theory their only recourse is the aesthetics of the unknown and that's where they discover poetry

>real intellectuals have moved on to theory
pffffhahaHAHAHAAH

wrong. that's where they discover, video games

There is one. Sadly, it appears to be lost. Its name is all we have: They're Singing a Song in Their Rocket.

Virgil's Aeneid
IS GREATER THAN
Homer's (Collective Greeks (unproven)) Iliad or Odyssey

Prove me wrong!

Well Stace was ass. Not much better than Silius Italicus.

This is correct. The Aeneid is probably the best epic poem in the entire poetic tradition, certainly in the epic tradition.

Axion Esti

Is it as inventive as the Iliad?

The Red Iculous is my favorite plant.

No. The art of the Aeneid is its synthesis of the ideas developed in the Iliad and Odyssey. It's a combination.

>This is correct. The Aeneid is probably the best epic poem in the entire poetic tradition, certainly in the epic tradition.

*blocca il tuo percorso*

But you must get the Dryden translation

>reading in translation
Arma plebemque cano...
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK

Isn't it written in blank verse though?

Yes, in dactylic hexameters, same as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Vergilian meter is much more refined than Homeric meter though, another way in which Vergil refines the Homeric epics.

Note though that all classical meter was "blank verse" -- unrhymed quantitative meter

But there are

In that case, doesn't your argument actually favor something like "Os Lusíadas" instead? Since he was inspired by both Homer and Virgil and was able to replicate the metric while rhyming

Not all, that's where my "confusion" is coming from

Rhyming is not inherently artful
Yes all. Name one rhymed classical poem.

If by classical you mean epic, i just did ("Os Lusíadas " )
Nothing is necessarily artful is it? Depends on why are you using any particular style/technique, whether you accomplish your objective successfully and whether that adds to your work in any meaningful way. Having said that, I don't see why being able to rhyme while conserving all the necessary characteristics for an epic poem would do anything but enrich it.

>for
*of

Didn't the author of Zorba also write a modern sequel to the Odyssey?

>If by classical you mean epic
I don't. "Classical" means ancient Greek or Roman, and by some definitions ancient Sanskrit as well as other more obscure classical languages. Portuguese is not a classical language.
And yeah I see your point about rhyming. I don't know Portuguese so I can't really evaluate the actual poetic quality of it, but the Aeneid is very artful and well-composed in terms of its language. Vergil's imagery is very evoacative, and he takes advantage of a lot of features of Latin to enhance the poeticism of the work.

The Lusiads is one of the greatest epics. Camões poetry is compared to Shakespeare's. He knew Latin and was familiar with the great epics, some parts of the Lusiads are almost like translations of Vergil.

yes and it was shit

Literature definitely does

I misunderstood you before and thought you said all epic poems where in blank verse, that's why I didn't understand what you meant by classical. One thing to keep in mind is that Camões' portuguese in Os Lusiadas was very particular, even for his time. As the other guy said, he knew latin (not sure if he knew ancient greek, but it's very possible) and would often create words derived from latin in order to convey meaning without sacrificing meter or rhyme.

And yes he was heavily influenced by both Virgil and Homer and if I recall correctly he even mentions them