And I too had the same problems with the poem in Possession — I’ve read the novel twice and my only memory of the poetry is that it is very long. I guess there are some devices that just don’t work with me.

Admittedly, I skimmed and skipped many of the sermon excerpts too, but then I read through them straight at the end (I skimmed all the poetry in Possession and then did the same thing…I should learn from this, shouldn’t I, and simply read them in the moment?) and I felt they were deliberately sculpted/excerpted after all, adding a sense of timelessness to the struggle at the very least; I don’t want to say much more than that, because it would risk spoilers, but I think they also locate the need for change in the individual (rather than in an external organization) because the old pattern of simply demonizing the “other” doesn’t lead to change. One of the plotlines does this too, of course, and I think that character actually attends some of these sermons (if I remember correctly), but I felt the epigraphs added a slightly different slant after all.