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wellownedbkupCondensed Epics: The Evolution of Long (Epic) Poetry and the Attention Span
April 2009
We don’t have the attention span for long poetry.
"Meadowlands" is an epic for a generation conditioned for Attention Deficit Disorder.
Historically, the epic poem has been used to relate to an audience the history and moral identity of a nation through allegory. Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands", in the tradition of ones such as Homer, Virgil and Milton, meets several major characteristics of an epic in a way that appeals to a generation of people with a penchant for short attention spans. Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands" becomes the contemporary epic, much as Virgil’s "Aeneid" or Homer’s "Odyssey" was a premier example of the epic in its day.
As in historical epic poetry, "Meadowlands" opens in medias res, stating the overarching theme and invoking a muse of some sort. Without telling the reader how the characters have reached the dissolution of their marriage, Glück begins in “Penelope’s Song” calling out to the “little soul, little perpetually undressed one” (Line 1). While not a traditional muse, it serves its purpose as a nod to the classic Grecian epic. Glück calls on this muse whilst setting the stage for the rest of the poem. In the lines following line 5, Glück brings the reader into the action. “He [the Odysseus character as we come to find out] will be home soon,” she says almost eagerly. Immediately thereafter, the mood of the main narrator, who we assume to be Penelope, seems almost introspective, calling attention to how she has not been perfect either. Even though they are separated when the reader first comes to recognize their presence, Penelope tries to make it seem as if things will continue to get better—that her marriage will not remain the shambles that are first presented.
Long lists and long speeches, another two characteristics of epic poetry, are dealt with slyly by Glück. Conventionally, the poet would use enumeratio to list the objects, places and people that tie the action to one place. Glück, still emulating these conventions, also gives the reader a sense of definition of place in such poems as “Heart’s Desire,” or more appropriately, “Meadowlands I,” wherein a conversation between the husband and wife allows the reader insight into their home life. We learn of certain neighbors, pets, neighbors’ pets, families and where the narrating family lacks in-between. This intimate glance into their life feels awkward and poignant, like we as readers are eavesdropping where we are not meant to hear. We see everything that the characters are—the cold husband, the withdrawn wife and the push-pull for control. In addition to these snippets of dialogue, Glück allows other speakers in the book to own long stretches of poetry. Poems such as “Telemachus’ Dilemma” and “Circe’s Power” give two other characters—that of the son and the mistress—the opportunity to expound upon their own roles and how they are affected by the actions of the estranged Penelope and Odysseus figures.
Unlike conventional epic poetry, however, "Meadowlands" focuses on the family as the ‘hero’ of the epic, not Odysseus, the typical epic hero. Through the actions and dramatic monologues that are placed before the reader, one can begin to understand the moral and ethical values of contemporary American society. Telemachus, the avatar by which we come to understand the son, constantly self-analyzes, turning over the details of his growth in a broken home. A vulnerable character, we can see through him how children feel neglected and set aside for the drama of a parent’s divorce. On the other hand, in ancient epic poetry, Greek men reflected their fear of women’s power in their mythology. For example, in Aeschylus’ "Orestia", the more chthonic a female deity was, the more dangerous. The Erinyes, the very pinnacle of nature-bound emotional female deity, were rendered useless through the use of logic and freedom from emotional drive—the world saved by men placing women in a strict role. In our postmodern world, however, these arcane roles no longer apply. Glück’s Penelope and Circe characters are no longer paragons of good and evil. They undergo a certain humanization when paired with a contemporary counterpart—the wife and mistress, respectively. Penelope is colder, a woman wrapped in her poetry and derisively compared to Flaubert in her isolation, as evidenced by “Ceremony”. Circe, a character always viewed as dangerous for her mercurial temperament and preying on hapless males, instead shows herself a victim of falling in love with the same man who was unfaithful to Penelope. The mistress who never becomes the wife.
Another inconsistency with "Meadowlands" and the classic Grecian epic, but a sign of the times, was the lack of divine intervention on behalf of the heroes. A trope of Greek mythology, deus ex machina consistently had the gods interfering in mortal matters. Athena herself, in Homer’s "Odyssey" tantalized and tortured Penelope, driving her to the brink of infidelity to her husband. Howsoever, God seems to be absent in Glück’s work. Religion, today, seems to be a snare and a racket. Enlightened, invested and cynical, man has turned its back slowly on the gods of their forefathers, venerating instead money and the achievements of man. In “Odysseus’ Decision,” there is no god that releases him from Circe’s spell and allows him to travel home. No, it is the return of his reason and sense of loyalty to his wife that allows him to return home.
In light of the preceding arguments, can "Meadowlands" stand the test of time as an example of a modern epic? Certain schools of poetic theory have postulated that the epic is in decline due to shortened attention spans. Upon first glance at "Meadowlands", one may agree with Dana Gioia when he says that ‘stories are no longer told in poetry…’ even calling the sequence something that “seemed to be just a group of short lyrics stuck together or an ode in the process of falling apart.” However, according to an early twentieth-century study of living oral epic traditions in the Balkans, oral epics demonstrated a tendency towards construction in short episodes in order to facilitate memorization. The resultant long narrative poem would then be an organic whole, episodic in nature, with each episode of equal importance. Would this mean, then, that Gioia is, by extension, calling the ancient epics failures as well? It is doubtful he would believe that to be verifiable.
One could argue that "Meadowlands" cannot be an epic because of its dependence on The Odyssey and its characters for the basis of storytelling. Surely there must be caveat that includes works that use established poetry to give their own poetry authority and weight. However, the interweaving of storylines allows for a closer inspection of the little details that build to a divorcing trough the classic story of Odysseus and Penelope. Her use of myth as a method of distancing the author from the subject matter also gives the reader the opportunity to observe the downfall from all sides—a Rashomon theater of day to day life. The subject matter flirts with becoming confessional poetry, despised by the New Formalists for its sensationalism, but manages to walk that fine line without crossing it by balancing what is said and unsaid in conversations. Dialogue is marked with only an indentation, disjointed and incomplete; it fails to translate clearly for the lack of facial cues and body language we take for granted, leaving the reader awkwardly grabbing for more information. This episodic, conversationalist approach to poetry hearkens back to days where epics were spoken aloud in front of an audience, actions following words to clearly express the moral. Not only does "Meadowlands" disprove Gioia’s remarks about the modern author “rejecting the traditional epic structures of narrative,” it does so in a way that appeals to modern generations. How so?
Frederick Feirstein, a member of the New Formalists like Dana Gioia, laid the blame for the decline in narrative and dramatic poetry on factors such as television. In his essay “The Other Long Poem,” Feirstein pointed to a “TV generation… conditioned to find emotion difficult to sustain without a commercial break. Naturally, when it came to poetry, they would gravitate toward the lyric sequence because it hit peaks of emotion for short periods.” The instant gratification fostered both by television and the Internet has proven to be a destructive influence on the attention span of mankind. Current estimates of the length of human attention span vary with age, reaching only a maximum of 20 minutes in adults. Whereas an audience in the 1850s could be attentive for hours to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the current generation rarely spends more than one minute on the average website. Attempting to read, ruminate over and appreciate long poetry such as classic Grecian epics or even more contemporary works such as Ezra Pound’s "Cantos" or Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself" becomes a near impossibility in face of these odds. Glück, presumably cognizant of this dilemma, offers instead a condensed epic—a series of free-verse poems in conversational style, all the while incorporating the elements of traditional epic poetry.
Our generation experiences life in 140 character ‘tweets’, in 3 and a half minute You Tube clips. Consider an idealized typical student’s week:
12 hours-------- Full time student status
16 hours------- 2 hours a class of homework, 2 nights a week
56 hours------- 8 hours of sleep a night
30 hours------- Part time work schedule
4 hours------- Average time spent in traffic to work and school
21 hours------- An hour a meal (allowing for shopping and/or savoring)
14 hours------- 2 hours a day spent toward hygienic purposes
153 hours------- Total Hours
With only 168 hours in a week, there are only 2 hours a day in which to account for family care, any emergency, social situations, etc that may occur. This is, of course, an idealistic situation. Oftentimes, students sleep less, travel more, work more, or go to school more. Time is precious; every minute not spent caring for the essentials becomes a minute wasted. To say that the pace of life has changed exceedingly since the turn of the century—let alone ancient Greece—is an understatement. As time has traveled on apace, the method by which we gain and retain our information—the means by which we learn our moral and national identities—has also changed. Consider the recent campaign of the presidential candidates for 2008 in the United States. No longer is it enough to hold rallies and town meetings in select cities in the country. The successful candidate used email, websites, podcasts, video bytes; he visited the talk show circuit—daytime and late night; commercials, etc. We receive our information faster and in a more concise format. The epic hero—that character that embodies the traits and morals valued by society, that teaches the audience what is commendable and what they should aspire to imitate—has no need to make a journey spanning volumes, just to teach an audience. As lessons continue to grow more concise and blunt, the current generation is able to appreciate and understand them.
Glück breaks the narrative structure into sections in the way of oral tradition, giving the reader shortened segments to read and comprehend. Each poem functions as an assay for the characters, using not only their different turns at speaking (“Penelope’s Song,” “Telemachus’ Burden,” “Circe’s Grief”) but also the moments of reflection in the parables to give the reader insight into the situation. Although the sections are not precisely chronological in order, they follow the style of storytellers the world over, who may at times be discursive, but all trends toward an end that endeavors to satisfy. Just as an opera uses different musical textures and a repeated thread of melody to evince a dramatic storyline, in a similar fashion, Glück creates movements in her epic through her judicious use of section breaks.
Although anemic as regards length in comparison to the works of the turn of the century, Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands" does not fail to emulate the masters of the epic in a condensed form. Her audience, a generation of Americans weaned on sitcoms and hampsterdance.com, struggles to digest long poetry in the style of Pound and Whitman. All critics aside, the current generation does not have the acuity of attentiveness to gain insight from such works. This age has made obsolete anything that extends beyond a page. Time is at a premium and information is plentiful, leaving no room for long poetry to flourish as it once did. Our age calls for a return to the basics of epic storytelling: episodes that capture the attention for the time, with breaks from time to time to digest what was just heard.
April 2009
We don’t have the attention span for long poetry.
"Meadowlands" is an epic for a generation conditioned for Attention Deficit Disorder.
Historically, the epic poem has been used to relate to an audience the history and moral identity of a nation through allegory. Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands", in the tradition of ones such as Homer, Virgil and Milton, meets several major characteristics of an epic in a way that appeals to a generation of people with a penchant for short attention spans. Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands" becomes the contemporary epic, much as Virgil’s "Aeneid" or Homer’s "Odyssey" was a premier example of the epic in its day.
As in historical epic poetry, "Meadowlands" opens in medias res, stating the overarching theme and invoking a muse of some sort. Without telling the reader how the characters have reached the dissolution of their marriage, Glück begins in “Penelope’s Song” calling out to the “little soul, little perpetually undressed one” (Line 1). While not a traditional muse, it serves its purpose as a nod to the classic Grecian epic. Glück calls on this muse whilst setting the stage for the rest of the poem. In the lines following line 5, Glück brings the reader into the action. “He [the Odysseus character as we come to find out] will be home soon,” she says almost eagerly. Immediately thereafter, the mood of the main narrator, who we assume to be Penelope, seems almost introspective, calling attention to how she has not been perfect either. Even though they are separated when the reader first comes to recognize their presence, Penelope tries to make it seem as if things will continue to get better—that her marriage will not remain the shambles that are first presented.
Long lists and long speeches, another two characteristics of epic poetry, are dealt with slyly by Glück. Conventionally, the poet would use enumeratio to list the objects, places and people that tie the action to one place. Glück, still emulating these conventions, also gives the reader a sense of definition of place in such poems as “Heart’s Desire,” or more appropriately, “Meadowlands I,” wherein a conversation between the husband and wife allows the reader insight into their home life. We learn of certain neighbors, pets, neighbors’ pets, families and where the narrating family lacks in-between. This intimate glance into their life feels awkward and poignant, like we as readers are eavesdropping where we are not meant to hear. We see everything that the characters are—the cold husband, the withdrawn wife and the push-pull for control. In addition to these snippets of dialogue, Glück allows other speakers in the book to own long stretches of poetry. Poems such as “Telemachus’ Dilemma” and “Circe’s Power” give two other characters—that of the son and the mistress—the opportunity to expound upon their own roles and how they are affected by the actions of the estranged Penelope and Odysseus figures.
Unlike conventional epic poetry, however, "Meadowlands" focuses on the family as the ‘hero’ of the epic, not Odysseus, the typical epic hero. Through the actions and dramatic monologues that are placed before the reader, one can begin to understand the moral and ethical values of contemporary American society. Telemachus, the avatar by which we come to understand the son, constantly self-analyzes, turning over the details of his growth in a broken home. A vulnerable character, we can see through him how children feel neglected and set aside for the drama of a parent’s divorce. On the other hand, in ancient epic poetry, Greek men reflected their fear of women’s power in their mythology. For example, in Aeschylus’ "Orestia", the more chthonic a female deity was, the more dangerous. The Erinyes, the very pinnacle of nature-bound emotional female deity, were rendered useless through the use of logic and freedom from emotional drive—the world saved by men placing women in a strict role. In our postmodern world, however, these arcane roles no longer apply. Glück’s Penelope and Circe characters are no longer paragons of good and evil. They undergo a certain humanization when paired with a contemporary counterpart—the wife and mistress, respectively. Penelope is colder, a woman wrapped in her poetry and derisively compared to Flaubert in her isolation, as evidenced by “Ceremony”. Circe, a character always viewed as dangerous for her mercurial temperament and preying on hapless males, instead shows herself a victim of falling in love with the same man who was unfaithful to Penelope. The mistress who never becomes the wife.
Another inconsistency with "Meadowlands" and the classic Grecian epic, but a sign of the times, was the lack of divine intervention on behalf of the heroes. A trope of Greek mythology, deus ex machina consistently had the gods interfering in mortal matters. Athena herself, in Homer’s "Odyssey" tantalized and tortured Penelope, driving her to the brink of infidelity to her husband. Howsoever, God seems to be absent in Glück’s work. Religion, today, seems to be a snare and a racket. Enlightened, invested and cynical, man has turned its back slowly on the gods of their forefathers, venerating instead money and the achievements of man. In “Odysseus’ Decision,” there is no god that releases him from Circe’s spell and allows him to travel home. No, it is the return of his reason and sense of loyalty to his wife that allows him to return home.
In light of the preceding arguments, can "Meadowlands" stand the test of time as an example of a modern epic? Certain schools of poetic theory have postulated that the epic is in decline due to shortened attention spans. Upon first glance at "Meadowlands", one may agree with Dana Gioia when he says that ‘stories are no longer told in poetry…’ even calling the sequence something that “seemed to be just a group of short lyrics stuck together or an ode in the process of falling apart.” However, according to an early twentieth-century study of living oral epic traditions in the Balkans, oral epics demonstrated a tendency towards construction in short episodes in order to facilitate memorization. The resultant long narrative poem would then be an organic whole, episodic in nature, with each episode of equal importance. Would this mean, then, that Gioia is, by extension, calling the ancient epics failures as well? It is doubtful he would believe that to be verifiable.
One could argue that "Meadowlands" cannot be an epic because of its dependence on The Odyssey and its characters for the basis of storytelling. Surely there must be caveat that includes works that use established poetry to give their own poetry authority and weight. However, the interweaving of storylines allows for a closer inspection of the little details that build to a divorcing trough the classic story of Odysseus and Penelope. Her use of myth as a method of distancing the author from the subject matter also gives the reader the opportunity to observe the downfall from all sides—a Rashomon theater of day to day life. The subject matter flirts with becoming confessional poetry, despised by the New Formalists for its sensationalism, but manages to walk that fine line without crossing it by balancing what is said and unsaid in conversations. Dialogue is marked with only an indentation, disjointed and incomplete; it fails to translate clearly for the lack of facial cues and body language we take for granted, leaving the reader awkwardly grabbing for more information. This episodic, conversationalist approach to poetry hearkens back to days where epics were spoken aloud in front of an audience, actions following words to clearly express the moral. Not only does "Meadowlands" disprove Gioia’s remarks about the modern author “rejecting the traditional epic structures of narrative,” it does so in a way that appeals to modern generations. How so?
Frederick Feirstein, a member of the New Formalists like Dana Gioia, laid the blame for the decline in narrative and dramatic poetry on factors such as television. In his essay “The Other Long Poem,” Feirstein pointed to a “TV generation… conditioned to find emotion difficult to sustain without a commercial break. Naturally, when it came to poetry, they would gravitate toward the lyric sequence because it hit peaks of emotion for short periods.” The instant gratification fostered both by television and the Internet has proven to be a destructive influence on the attention span of mankind. Current estimates of the length of human attention span vary with age, reaching only a maximum of 20 minutes in adults. Whereas an audience in the 1850s could be attentive for hours to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the current generation rarely spends more than one minute on the average website. Attempting to read, ruminate over and appreciate long poetry such as classic Grecian epics or even more contemporary works such as Ezra Pound’s "Cantos" or Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself" becomes a near impossibility in face of these odds. Glück, presumably cognizant of this dilemma, offers instead a condensed epic—a series of free-verse poems in conversational style, all the while incorporating the elements of traditional epic poetry.
Our generation experiences life in 140 character ‘tweets’, in 3 and a half minute You Tube clips. Consider an idealized typical student’s week:
12 hours-------- Full time student status
16 hours------- 2 hours a class of homework, 2 nights a week
56 hours------- 8 hours of sleep a night
30 hours------- Part time work schedule
4 hours------- Average time spent in traffic to work and school
21 hours------- An hour a meal (allowing for shopping and/or savoring)
14 hours------- 2 hours a day spent toward hygienic purposes
153 hours------- Total Hours
With only 168 hours in a week, there are only 2 hours a day in which to account for family care, any emergency, social situations, etc that may occur. This is, of course, an idealistic situation. Oftentimes, students sleep less, travel more, work more, or go to school more. Time is precious; every minute not spent caring for the essentials becomes a minute wasted. To say that the pace of life has changed exceedingly since the turn of the century—let alone ancient Greece—is an understatement. As time has traveled on apace, the method by which we gain and retain our information—the means by which we learn our moral and national identities—has also changed. Consider the recent campaign of the presidential candidates for 2008 in the United States. No longer is it enough to hold rallies and town meetings in select cities in the country. The successful candidate used email, websites, podcasts, video bytes; he visited the talk show circuit—daytime and late night; commercials, etc. We receive our information faster and in a more concise format. The epic hero—that character that embodies the traits and morals valued by society, that teaches the audience what is commendable and what they should aspire to imitate—has no need to make a journey spanning volumes, just to teach an audience. As lessons continue to grow more concise and blunt, the current generation is able to appreciate and understand them.
Glück breaks the narrative structure into sections in the way of oral tradition, giving the reader shortened segments to read and comprehend. Each poem functions as an assay for the characters, using not only their different turns at speaking (“Penelope’s Song,” “Telemachus’ Burden,” “Circe’s Grief”) but also the moments of reflection in the parables to give the reader insight into the situation. Although the sections are not precisely chronological in order, they follow the style of storytellers the world over, who may at times be discursive, but all trends toward an end that endeavors to satisfy. Just as an opera uses different musical textures and a repeated thread of melody to evince a dramatic storyline, in a similar fashion, Glück creates movements in her epic through her judicious use of section breaks.
Although anemic as regards length in comparison to the works of the turn of the century, Louise Glück’s "Meadowlands" does not fail to emulate the masters of the epic in a condensed form. Her audience, a generation of Americans weaned on sitcoms and hampsterdance.com, struggles to digest long poetry in the style of Pound and Whitman. All critics aside, the current generation does not have the acuity of attentiveness to gain insight from such works. This age has made obsolete anything that extends beyond a page. Time is at a premium and information is plentiful, leaving no room for long poetry to flourish as it once did. Our age calls for a return to the basics of epic storytelling: episodes that capture the attention for the time, with breaks from time to time to digest what was just heard.
