Talk:Clarel

Record "broken" by non-notable work

User:AmericanPoet claims that there's a work that makes Clarel not the longest but the second-longest poem in American literature. I can't find evidence that this longer book exists, but if I work on the basis that it exists but is non-notable in the extreme, is Clarel then the longest or second-longest? Pseudomonas_(talk) 20:00, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

No evidence

I can't find this rival poem, except a brief description online with the option to buy. The author has no personal information anywhere and added this information to the article, not including a citation. They have supposedly written a number of "epic poems" that seem to be self-published. It is also possible this is just trolling. This claim has been removed from the article because literary merit is lacking, as is non-notability.Gloucester1692 (talk) 18:36, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

There is no source for saying it is the "second longest," but there are several refences in pretty Reliable Sources for longest here and here, but they don't indicate how they know, indeed how anyone could possibly know, or who first made the assertion. Library of American says “one of the longest” here.

Gillian Osborne in Boston Review says “longest to date” here, but again, doesn't say how she knows.

A search of the Northwestern Newberry 1991 Clarel with Bezanson's classic Historical and Critical Introduction finds no hits for "longest" here and Hershel Parker’s new introduction to the reprint of the Northwestern-Newberry edition finds no hits for longest.

Several pages of searches in Google Books doesn't hit anything useful, though a number of booksellers pick up the original (and unsourced) assertion from this article.

So my suggestion is to just say "it is one of the longest poems" in American literature," which is hard to dispute. ch (talk) 05:20, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I chickened out -- "perhaps the longest"?ch (talk) 05:24, 5 May 2020 (UTC)