Description

I challenged myself, some years ago, to write an Epic. Literally, as in the Poetic Form. It took something where between five and seven years to finish, I can’t honestly be certain, but I made sure it had everything: invocation of the muses, epic question, single combat, heroic catalog, journey to the underworld, and over two hundred pages of iambic pentameter.

There’s definitely things about it I’d do differently were I composing this now: the principle hero’s lost love wouldn’t be a woman, for one thing. But what can you expect from something you began writing while still living under the roof that will one day disown you for coming out? I’d daresay that when I wrote the first lines, I wasn’t fully aware myself that I was queer, because I certainly didn’t have a clear idea of what being queer was. Some of the ignorance of my younger self–what could be removed, what HAD to be removed–has been removed. But to fully remove it all would require completely rewriting the poem, and I don’t think I could do that. The piece is as it is, and if I cannot make it perfect, well, perfection was never on the table in the first place.

Author: Rob MacWolf
Cover by Rob MacWolf
Style:  Literary Work
Parental Rating: R
Publication Date: January 2025