So the original form of Homer's work, though a far cry from a work of literature as we know it now, is not exactly a song, pure and simple, either. It may be more the record of a song, building, perhaps, over the poet's entire lifetime —not spontaneity outright but what Marianne Moore would call "a simulacrum of spontaneity."

Unknown, Homer, Robert Fagles_ Knox,…, loc. 4792