Davies examines the work of four of the most important twentieth-century poets who have explored the epic tradition. Some of the poems display an explicit concern with ideas of American nationhood, while others emulate the formal ambitions and encyclopaedic scope of the epic poem. The study undertakes extensive close readings of Hart Cranes The Bridge (1930), Allen Ginsbergs Howl (1956) and The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-71 (1972), James Merrills The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), and John Ashberys Flow Chart (1991). Although not primarily an account of a Whitmanian...
Davies examines the work of four of the most important twentieth-century poets who have explored the epic tradition. Some of the poems display an expl...
