The poem, written by George Elliott Clarke, Canada's poet laureate, is a summary response to Ezra Pound's notion that "epic is a poem containing history." He is working on a three-book epic poem ...

dynastic epic. It told of families and their origins. The poet’s goal was to place individual heroic achievement inside a larger story about the life of a clan or bloodline over time. Epic poetry ...

and their limits, as well as those on linguistics and on the relationships between poems. The account of why epic poets retained some Aeolic formulae is very clear.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review ...