A decidedly American tradition, the long poem became
the premier literary endeavor for poets in the
twentieth century. Writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound, and William Carlos Williams worked on long
poems, but under the auspices of the "modern epic."
The three postmodern long poems under study here-
Kenneth Koch's Seasons on Earth, Edward Dorn's
Gunslinger, and James Merrill's The Changing Light
at Sandover-illustrate a dramatic rupture with the
texts of modernism by introducing comic motifs and
multi-voiced narration-situations described by
Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin as "carnival"
and "dialogism" respectively-into the canon of the
American long poem. These innovations allow the
postmodern long poem to evolve past the thematic and
aesthetic strictures imposed by the texts of
modernism. They represent an opening up of the
genre and hint at directions the long poem may take
in the future. The present study should have appeal
to researchers and students of postmodern
literature, particularly poetry, as well as general
readers interested in recent developments in the
world of letters.