What is an Epoem?

The Epoem is a form I've invented. It came about organically when a few of my poems resembled a big E on the page. Think of it as a skeleton on which one hangs the lines. For me, Epoems are art objects. Writing them is liberating. Keeping to this framework also helps me focus on only the most important parts of the emerging poem as I write it. There are 3 IMPORTANT RULES. 1. NO PAGE BREAKS. It must stay on one page, (Word doc or Pages doc). 2. NO STANZA BREAKS. 3. There MUST BE THE SAME NUMBER OF LINES ABOVE THE MIDDLE LINE AS THERE ARE BELOW IT. I try to make the middle line a turn in the poem, but that is a soft rule that may be broken.

Epoems may be prose-poems, essays, flash as long as they maintain the E form. I rarely use italics or quotation marks, but that's up to you. Line breaks are a secondary consideration- break them as you see fit.

WHAT I WILL LOOK FOR IN YOUR WORK
​Poetry does not have to have an emotional core. It does not have to have an overt meaning. As long as I find the piece compelling in some way. I love atmosphere and tone more than almost any other poetic device. Use ambiguity well. Near-rhymes are perfect for Epoems. I love what Mary Ruefle said in one of her essays-
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I do not know what my poems are about, except on rare occasions, and I never know what they mean.

If you'd like to give it a try, send me up to 3 unpublished Epoems at Epoems2022@gmail.com
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Below is one of my Epoems by way of example. In this piece, there are 18 lines above the middle line, and 18 below. The most number of lines that fit on a Word document is 19. Any more than that will push the piece onto a second page.

The Epoem below appears online at 2river.org in the chapbook section.
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One Hundred Moving Parts of Love

When she spoke about her grandfather’s walnut trees
I remembered something
out of a book
about a man who
stood on a hill
outside town.
Stood there all 
night playing guitar 
for a woman
who didn’t love him.
I thought maybe
her grandfather
was the man in that
novel. Someone
I knew somehow.
She kept on with
her story about
earth and sunlight.
She said something built from the soul is not made
by the heart
though there is 
blood in it. 
And then she kissed me.
I saw in her eyes
that I missed
the last train.
Places move back
and forth under our feet
like clouds, she said,
because falling forever
is the same as standing still.
And she could not 
love me. She said 
a harvest is a work
of art in the sky, 
a museum of the
ground made from the beautiful left hand of the world.

​Lenny DellaRocca