The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

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.

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

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.