I guess that there would be a couple possible takes on it.
Is there a market currently? Not that I've noticed.
Could a market be created? It's certainly possible. One way may be to serialize the poem - get the reader hooked a chapter at a time. Or you could establish yourself as a prose writer in a genre then hit them with an epic poem in the same genre (hmm - just had an image of a noir detective epic
).
A couple generations ago, Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body" and "Western Star" were quite successful, and that was long after the epic was "dead". They may be worth taking a glance at.
Certainly things have changed since they were published, but they do go to show you that it can be done.
-Frank
