ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Hard Country's navigation of epic tradition in two different lights: First through some of the standard expectations of traditional epic. Second it also explores Hard Country through the poem's affinities with other epics by women. Kathleen Crown examines Sharon Doubiago's pan-American 1992 epic, South America Mi Hija as well as Hard Country through the lens of H. D'.s epic tour de force, Helen in Egypt, to sketch "a tight web of corresponding myths, codes, desires, and coincidences". A common reading of the Odyssey suggests that the Trojan War is still going on for Odysseus; similarly, the hero of Hard Country is still haunted by the drawn-out Viet Nam War, and still fights the war of gender. The chapter outlines the ways in which Doubiago's Hard Country talks back to and simultaneously speaks within the discourses of epic tradition.
