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Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative.

The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them.

The higher Greek poetry did not make up fictitious plots; its business was to express the heroic saga, the myths.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.