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Length is what we make of it, or what we have time to make of it, while “epic” seems to be defined by what it makes of us. In this seminar we’ll play with 20th and 21st century long poems in a variety of modes, from lyric sequences to serial epics, charting their forms and attempting to expand our sense of their functions. We’ll pay special attention to ways in which modern and contemporary long poems engage with particular places and local cultures while situating themselves in cosmopolitan space. How do long poems make the extended temporality of reading and writing an active part of their formal apparatus? Our reach will be global: poems from the U.S., Ireland, England, Canada, the Caribbean, India, and Africa.