John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea-Pieces

by Douglas Robillard

John Marr and Other Sailors is a volume of poetry published by Herman Melville in 1888. Melville published twenty-five copies at his own expense, indicating that they were intended for family and friends. Henry Chapin wrote in an introduction to a reprint that "Melville's loveable freshness of personality is everywhere in evidence, in the voice of a true poet".

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1888

About the author

Douglas Robillard served for 26 years at the University of New Haven, variously as English department chair, dean, and library director. He is the author of Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint (Kent State University Press, 1997) and editor of The Poems of Herman Melville (Kent State University Press, 2000) and a facsimile edition of Melville’s John Marr and Other Sailors, with Some Sea-Pieces (Kent State University Press, 2006).

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sea is the setting for poems on man’s hubris, nature’s indifference, and fate & resignation.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melville wasn’t always successful as a poet. (See my overall thoughts of his poetry here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....) But John Marr and Other Sailors is his last collection of poetry (self) published in his lifetime, and his best. Here, he relaxes the formal aspects of the poems, uses a freer metrical form, and doing so revives the voice we recognize from his earlier novels.

The poems breathe life in old friends and recall disasters old. Many of the poems tell of the sudden unraveling of fate in the shadow of success, a situation Melville knew all too well.

This is a very good edition that includes an informative introduction as well as details on the book’s printing. But while it focuses on the development of books, it doesn’t provide much detailed information about the poems. And the poems, though, are very dense and full of obscure allusions and nautical terms. The Robert Penn Warren collection, cited above, includes many of the poems in this set, but also adds detailed notes that make understanding them much easier.

[Emma Stark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Tom Deadlight poem +prose intro is amazing! Most of the other poems are just ok, they give an atmosphere of sailing, which is nice, but they aren't as psychologically deep as other things that he has written.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mercifully short poetry collection that does have some pearls here and there. It avoids many of the principal flaws I highlighted in my review of Melville's other short poetry collection Timoleon.

As in Timoleon though, poem length and poem quality do seem inversely related. "The Haglets," as well as the prose introduction to "John Marr" are long and dreary, while many of the brief "Pebbles" and "Minor Sea-Pieces" really hit the mark. But bucking the trend, the longest poem of all, "Bridegroom Dick," is really quite fun (...no, it's not wedding night erotica - Dick is just the narrator's name). Read aloud for best reseults.

[Kit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really liked the prose preface to "John Marr" & that's about it.