OPINIONSnRecreating the Epicnby Burton RafFeln”And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into hisnnostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”n— Genesis 2.7nGenesis: An Epic Poemnby Frederick TurnernDallas: The Saybrook Press; 303 pp.,n$19.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper)nThe 19th century had an unfortunatenpassion for novels in verse. Inhave tried to read some of the morencelebrated, notably Elizabeth BarrettnBrowning’s Aurora Leigh (which VirginianWoolf somehow found delightful),nand never made it through to thenend. George Eliot’s Middlemarch maynbe the best novel ever written in English,nbut her novel in verse. ThenSpanish Gypsy, is a soggy bore.nWhat Frederick Turner has nownproven, with Genesis, is that the problemnwas not poetry but the poets whonused it—and the way they used it. Forninstead of tackling epic subjects withnepic approaches, as Milton and Vergilnand Homer once did. Browning andnEliot tried to reduce poetry to narrative.nThat is, they seem to have takennthe novel to be the true form andnpoetry to be, on the whole, a kind ofnpleasant accident, a grace note withnwhich to decorate the holy sanctuary ofnprose. Browning’s heroine, for instance,ndescribes her father like this:n”My father was an austere Englishman,/nWho, after a dry lifetime spentnat home/ In college-learning, law, andnparish talk,/ Was flooded with a passionnunaware,/ His whole provisioned andncomplacent past/ Drowned out fromnBurton Raffel is a poet, novelist, andntranslator who lives in Peru, NewnYork.nnnhim that moment.”nTurner breaks this dull mold intonbits. From the first moment, we hearnthe urgent voice of the verse storyteller,nthe true epic voice, which melds poetrynand narrative into an inseparable, swiftmovingnwhole:nListen! I must tell of thenbeginnings.nOf corpses buried in the wallsnof worlds.nOf how those men and womennworth a storynBurn and consume the powersnthey’re kindled by . . .nTurner is plainly a very good poet. Butnso, too (though not quite so good) wasnElizabeth Barrett Browning. The difference,nplainly, is that Turner in no wayncondescends to his form: he means tonwrite an epic because what he wants tonsay, and the way he wants to say it,nrequire epic dimensions. Perhaps that isnindeed the key word: “dimensions.”nThe boundaries of Genesis stretch —nliterally — to the farthest stars. Thisnepic contains more than multitudes, itnoffers us complex people of epic character,nperforming deeds of truly epicnsize. And it gives us the tale of thesenpeople in flexible, clear verse thatnknows how to soar, just as it knows hownto modulate downward without turningnflabby. In a true epic, even straightforwardndescription must sing:nBy noon he’s come into a wastenof hills,nBarren horizonless, smelling ofndarkish resins;nFEBRUARY 1989/23n