My method of composition

The style I often use is the epithet, a combination of a descriptive phrase and a noun. An epithet presents a miniature portrait that identifies a person or thing by highlighting a prominent characteristic of that person or thing. In English, my epithet usually consists of a noun modified by a compound adjective, such as the following: fleet-footed Achilles. The epithet is an ancient relative of such later epithets as Richard the Lion-Hearted. I repeated my epithets often, presumably so the listeners of my recited tales could easily remember and picture the person or thing each time it was mentioned. In this respect, the epithet resembles the leitmotiv of opera composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883). The leitmotiv was a repeated musical theme associated with a character, a group of characters, an emotion, or an idea. The meter of my epic poems is dactylic hexameter. A dactyl is a metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables, as in the words technical allocate and harbinger. Hexameter is a line containing six metrical feet. Thus, dactylic hexameter is a scheme containing six dactyls, as in the following line: MAKE me a BEAU ti ful GOWN and a HAT fringed with TASS les of DOWN, good sir.