History
Although the long poem has traceable ancestry for several thousand years, Walt Whitman's Song of Myself is a good recent example of the lyric-epic fusion by which we now characterize the long poem. Song of Myself was first published untitled in 1855 as part of Whitman's larger collection Leaves of Grass. It underwent numerous revisions at Whitman's hand until just before his death in 1892. Whitman was among the first American poets in recent history to attempt a "tale of the tribe" for the United States. From this time the long poem has continued to evolve and gain stature as a legitimate genre of poetry.
Read more about this topic: Long Poem
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