Thoughtful - & pleasingly brief - essay in current Poetry magazine by Adam Kirsch. Attempts to characterize distinctive aspect of contemporary poetry by way of an essay by Heidegger ("The Origin of the Work of Art").

Have to think about this for a while. Kirsch suggests that contemporary (or postmodern) poetry has distanced itself from modernist totalizing (& sometimes totalitarian) social ambition, & focused instead on a more humble (& passive) rendering of the things of the earth itself.

If true, then perhaps contemporary poetry has (temporarily?) renounced the "epic" layer of poetry altogether.